Finkelstein_umd_0117E_16186 - DRUM

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ABSTRACT
Title of Document:
CARRY ON: AMERICAN WOMEN AND
THE VETERANIST-COMMEMORATION
OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR, 1917-1945
Allison Sarah Finkelstein, Ph.D., 2015
Directed By:
Associate Professor Saverio Giovacchini,
Department of History
The commemoration of the First World War deeply impacted American culture
between 1917 and 1945, and incited a contentious debate about the best forms of
military memorialization. All kinds of American women participated in
commemorations alongside men, the government, veterans, and the military. Even
more frequently, they took part in predominantly female memorialization projects,
many of which aided veterans.
Organizations composed of American women who believed they served or
sacrificed during the First World War defined community service and veterans
advocacy as forms of commemoration that they pursued in addition to, or sometimes
instead of, more permanent forms of commemoration. In keeping with women’s
contributions to the war effort and their Progressive era service and reform activities,
many American women pursued service-based commemorative projects to serve the
nation in ways normally prohibited to them because of gender-based restrictions on
their citizenship.
This dissertation investigates how American women who served during the First
World War commemorated the conflict during the interwar period and through the
end of World War Two. It employs the term “veteranist-commemorations” to
describe the service-based memorialization projects these women advocated, and
designates these women as female “veteranist-commemorators.” Rejecting traditional
monuments, female veteranist-commemorators placed the plight of male and female
veterans at the center of their memorialization efforts. Women’s veteranistcommemorations did not solely address veterans of strictly defined military service,
but included anyone who sacrificed during the war.
Female veteranist-commemorators pioneered a new form of commemoration that
revolutionized American memorial practices. Their actions forced Americans to rethink their commemorative practices and provided a new way to conceptualize the
definition of a memorial. Through their outspoken support of veteranistcommemorations, these women promoted a type of commemoration that included
intangible actions, human bodies, and ephemeral activities as crucial, defined parts of
the memorialization process. In doing so, female veteranist-commemorators changed
the course of American military commemoration, even though their memorialization
methods did not gain as widespread acceptance as they hoped.
CARRY ON: AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE VETERANISTCOMMEMORATION OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR, 1917-1945
By
Allison Sarah Finkelstein
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2015
Advisory Committee:
Associate Professor Saverio Giovacchini, Chair
Professor Donald Linebaugh
Associate Professor Robyn Muncy
Associate Professor Michael Ross
Associate Professor Jennifer Wingate
© Copyright by
Allison Sarah Finkelstein
2015
Dedication
In memory of Lewis Finkelstein:
Seaman First Class, United States Navy, World War II. 1926-2012.
ii
Acknowledgements
Many people and institutions supported me as I wrote this dissertation. It is a
pleasure to finally thank them for their contributions. The Department of History at
the University of Maryland, College Park, generously supported my work through
teaching assistantships, a summer prospectus development grant, and a Fall 2014
History Department Dissertation Writing Fellowship. Along with the Graduate
School and the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of History provided me
with several travel grants to present at scholarly conferences.
An extraordinarily kind and intelligent group of professors at the University of
Maryland, College Park, helped me complete this dissertation. They include: Dr.
Richard Bell, Dr. Clare Lyons, Dr. Jon Sumida, Dr. Marsha Rozenblit, Dr. Bernard
Cooperman, Dr. Sonya Michel, and Dr. Marion Moser Jones. Jodi Hall provided kind
and practical advice through the entire process.
I could not have written this dissertation without the support and wisdom of
the wonderful members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Robyn Muncy, Dr.
Michael Ross, Dr. Donald Linebaugh, and Dr. Jennifer Wingate. Thank you all for
your dedication to this project and for making my defense such a rewarding
experience. Thanks especially to Dr. Wingate for generously sharing her time and
making the trip to College Park for the defense. For three years, my adviser, Dr.
Saverio Giovacchini, has mentored me through the dissertation process. He believed
in my project from the very beginning and devoted himself to my work with a rare
intensity and passion. Dr. Giovacchini constantly pushed me and helped me become
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the scholar I am today. I will always be grateful for his mentorship, friendship,
encouragement, and expectations of excellence.
Outside of the University of Maryland, many other scholars supported this
dissertation. Thank you to: Dr. Pearl James, Dr. Steven Trout, Dr. Michal Neiberg,
Dr. Christopher Capozzola, Dr. Mark Levtich, Dr. Mitch Yockelson, Dr. Michael
Matheny, Dr. Stephen Carney, and the Department of History at the United States
Military Academy, West Point. Margaret Vining and. Dr. Barton C. Hacker at the
National Museum of American History took me into their office and research files
and encouraged me to build on own scholarship. Dr. Richard Palmer and Dr. James
Whittenburg at The College of William & Mary inspired me to apply to graduate
school and prepared me for this process far better than I realized as an undergraduate.
Numerous archivists and institutions guided my work and enriched my
research. I would especially like to thank: Jonathan Casey and Stacie Peterson at the
National World War I Museum; Britta Granrud at the Women’s Memorial
Foundation; and Whitney Hopkins, Susan Watson, Jean Shulman, and Shane
MacDonald at the American Red Cross Headquarters. I also appreciate the help of the
National Archives, College Park; The National Archives, Washington D.C.; The
Library of Congress; the Margaret Herrick Library; the Indiana Historical Society;
The University of Texas, San Antonio Special Collections; and the Archives of
American Art. Holly S. Fenelon provided key advice about the Gold Star
Pilgrimages. Captain Jenna Grassbaugh generously shared her personal story with a
stranger over the phone and helped me connect my argument to the present day.
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Peter Booth, Ian Kerr, Tom Shedden, and Simon Matthews, my former
colleagues in the History Department at Lord Wandsworth College, are responsible
for my interest in World War One. I am thankful for their friendship and for the
incredible opportunities they gave me to explore British commemorative culture.
I have been fortunate to work in several internships and part time jobs during
graduate school that provided valuable opportunities to gain public history skills.
Along the way, each group of colleagues I met encouraged me as I worked on my
dissertation. Thank you to: Dr. Bruce Ragsdale, Dr. Jake Kobrick, and Dr. Daniel
Holt at the Federal Judicial History Office; and to Colonel Deborah Grays (Ret.),
Lieutenant General Claude M. Kicklighter (Ret.), Mark Franklin, Mose McWhoter,
Larry Brom, Devon Hardy, Dr. James Wainwright, Trina Chisholm, Victor Lopez,
Richard Williams, Colonel Gary Szabo, Deborah Cox, Eric Marr, Lieutenant
Commander John Supple, SSGT James Hartman, Sandra O’Dea, and Alicia Jones at
the Department of Defense Vietnam War Commemoration Program.
The staff of the American Battle Monuments Commission played a huge role
in this dissertation. They gave me the opportunity to intern for their agency, an
experience which led directly to this dissertation. They supported me throughout the
entire process and I am extremely grateful to all of them. I especially want to thank:
Senator Max Cleland, Mike Conley, Tim Nosal, John Marshall, General John S.
Brown, Alec Bennett, Alan Amelinckx, Sarah Herrmann, Martha Sell, John Brennan,
David and Bibiane Bedford, Jay and Amy Blount, Craig and Lorna Rahanian, Tom
Sole, Edwin Fountain, Bud Schaster, Pat Harris, Samuel Thompson, Roberto
Dominguez, Angelo Munsel, Mike Coonce, Geoffrey Fournier, and Annelle Ferrand.
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Mike Shipman provided generous help with photographs. Colonel Robert J.
Dalessandro (RET), Michael G. Knapp, and Monique Ceruti provided crucial support
and encouragement during the critical last phase of this process; I appreciate their
unwavering belief in my abilities and potential.
I am so grateful to my friends for their advice and constant cheerleading.
Thank you to: Reid Gustafson, Nate Reul, Rachel Spitz-Leiberman, Ayah Nuridden,
Alda Benjamen, Robert Bland, Lane Wyndham, Vince Houghton, Jake Couch, Scott
Moore, Tyler Stump, Derek Leininger, Joshua Furman, Brandi Townsend, Shawn
Moura, Cynthia Thaxton, Bettina Hilliard, Mitra Shultz, Oliva Novak, Shayna
Daghigh, Haessly Frantz, Katie Lantner, Nina Rosenberg, Caitlin Doyle, Lisa
Braverman, Alexandra Pomeroy, Varnika Roy, Rohan Fernandes, Melissa Gray,
Juliana Glassco, Joshua Clayton, Imogen and Mark Woods, Norma Rudat, Marta
Enriquez Chica, Ian and Lynn Power, and Kristen Long. Some friends have gone
above and beyond to help me complete this dissertation. They each know their
contributions and I cannot thank them enough: Harrison Guthorn, Meghan Ryan
Guthorn, Joshua Walker, Sara Black, Lauren Gauthier, Laura Steadman, Amy
Meyers, Christopher Ballard, Colonel Neale Cosby (Ret.), and Richard Azzaro.
Katelin Lee read many chapters and provided crucial suggestions. Richard Hulver
remained a constant supporter and an intellectual confidante. Elizabeth Hyman helped
me realize my central argument and, along with Lindsey Crane, buoyed me in
countless ways each day.
Most importantly, I could not have completed this dissertation without the
love and support of my family. George and Edith Hoffman, Clare Finkelstein, and
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Steven and Colleen Hoffman always let me know how deeply they believed in me. I
lost my grandfather, Lewis Finkelstein, just as I started this dissertation, and it is to
his memory that I dedicate this work. My sister, Elaina Finkelstein, helped me edit
images and cheered me on with care packages, love, and friendship. There are not
enough words to express my gratitude for all that my parents, David and Michele
Finkelstein, have done throughout this process. My mother encouraged me with her
unceasing understanding, comfort, and patient phone calls. My father inspired me
through his own historical acumen and acted like the sixth member of my dissertation
committee through his deep engagement with my work. Thank you both for helping
me complete this marathon: your love has carried me through to the finish line.
vii
Table of Contents
Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... iii
Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... viii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................... x
List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................... xviii
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1: Banding Together: The Women’s Overseas Service League and
Veteranist-Commemorations ...................................................................................... 36
A Brief History of the Women’s Overseas Service League ................................... 38
Service as Commemoration .................................................................................... 52
Helping Their Own: Service Towards Former Overseas Women .......................... 59
Helping Their Boys: WOSL Service Towards Male Veterans ............................... 67
Advocacy for Former Overseas Women................................................................. 70
Preserving the History of Overseas Women ........................................................... 78
Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 81
Chapter 2: Service Inscribed in Stone: The Attempted Compromise Between Service
and Statue at the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War ..................... 83
The Background of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War ....... 86
Memorialization Trends after the First World War ................................................ 89
“The Spirit of Nursing”: The Jane Delano Memorial ............................................. 98
Choosing a Memorial Building............................................................................. 109
The Architecture of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War .... 121
The Blank Column and the Women’s Overseas Service League ......................... 134
Conclusion: Presenting the Building to the Public ............................................... 141
Chapter 3: “Let Us Take Up the Torch Individually and Collectively”: The American
War Mothers and Veteranist-Commemorations ....................................................... 146
A Brief History of the American War Mothers .................................................... 147
Motherhood as Wartime Service .......................................................................... 161
Service Towards Veterans .................................................................................... 165
The American War Mothers Memorial Home ...................................................... 173
Supporting Fellow War Mothers .......................................................................... 182
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 187
Chapter 4: “A Great Living and Moving Monument”: The Gold Star Pilgrimages as
Veteranist-Commemorations .................................................................................... 190
The American Battle Monuments Commission: Guardian of America’s Overseas
Military Memory................................................................................................... 192
The Gold Star Pilgrimage Program....................................................................... 201
Gold Star Pilgrims Served and Sacrificed for the Nation ..................................... 210
The Gold Star Pilgrimages as Veteranist-Commemorations ................................ 219
The Gold Star Pilgrimage Rest Houses as a Physical Manifestation of VeteranistCommemorations .................................................................................................. 223
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 233
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Chapter 5: Exhibiting Veteranist-Commemorations: American Women’s First World
War Uniforms at the Smithsonian’s National Museum ............................................ 237
The Background and Context of the NSCDA Uniforms Collection..................... 239
Staking a Claim for Women in the National Museum’s Narrative of World War
One ........................................................................................................................ 249
Denied Display: The Temporary Inclusion of the NSCDA Uniforms Collection in
the Smithsonian’s United States National Museum.............................................. 265
Conclusion: The Second World War and the Legacy of the NSCDA Uniforms
Collection .............................................................................................................. 279
Chapter 6: Remember My Forgotten Man (and Woman): Popular Culture, Politics,
and Women’s Roles as Veteranist-Commemorators in the 1920s and 1930s .......... 284
The Interwar Political Backlash against the First World War .............................. 288
Female Veteranist-Commemorators’ Reactions to the Disillusionment of the
Interwar Era .......................................................................................................... 297
Gold Diggers of 1933: A Popular Culture Anthem for Veteranist-Commemorations
............................................................................................................................... 306
Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 330
Conclusion: The Nationalization of Veteranist-Commemorations........................... 334
Excursus A: Shot-by-Shot Scene Analysis of “Remember My Forgotten Man” ..... 357
Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 369
ix
List of Figures
Figure 0.1: Before and after images of a wounded soldier wearing one of Anna
Coleman Ladd’s masks. American Red Cross photographer. Anna Coleman Ladd
Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Figure 0.2: Some of Anna Coleman Ladd’s masks for disfigured soldiers shown
displayed in her Paris studio. Note how they resembled sculptural memorials. Ca
1918. American Red Cross photographer. Anna Coleman Ladd Papers, Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Figure 0.3: Women’s Overseas Service League plaster medallion. Unidentified
photographer. A caption on the back of this image notes that League presented this
medallion to Marshal Foch. Anna Coleman Ladd Papers, Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution.
Figure 1.1: The poem “Re-dedication” featured on the front cover of Carry On, Vol.
V, No. 4, November, 1926. Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On
Periodical Collection, Gift of Carolyn Habgood, Women’s Memorial Foundation
Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial Foundation.
Figure 1.2: The WOSL joined with the American Legion during a Memorial Day
ceremony at Suresnes American Cemetery outside of Paris during the WOSL’s 1930
National Convention in Paris. Carry On Vol. IX, August 1930, No.3, pg. 36.
Women’s Memorial Foundation, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry
On Periodical Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial Foundation.
Figure 1.3: Back cover of Carry On Vol. IV, August 1925, No. 3. Carry On
Figure 1.4: WOSL emblem from the cover of Carry On. Carry On Periodical
Collection, Gift of Carolyn Habgood, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial Foundation.
Figure 1.5: WOSL Seattle Unit. Women’s Overseas Service League Collection,
National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri
Figure 1.6: WOSL Seattle Unit members on November 11, 1968. From left to right:
Mrs. Edna Lord (ARC), Mrs. I.M. (Anna) Palmaw (ANC), Miss Rose Glass
(YMCA), and Miss Blanche Wenner (YMCA). Women’s Overseas Service League
Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
x
Figure 1.7: Miller Cottage, Dayton Home. Carry On Vol. XIV, November 1935, No.
4, pg. 7. Women’s Memorial Foundation, Women’s Overseas Service League
(WOSL) Carry On Periodical Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial
Foundation.
Figure 2.1: Front façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War,
Washington D.C. The inscription above the columns reads: “In Memory of the Heroic
Women of the World War.” August 16, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.2: Front façade of the Memorial to the Heroic Women of the Civil War,
Washington D.C. May 31, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.3: Detail of the front façade of the Memorial to the Heroic Women of the
Civil War, Washington D.C. The inscription under the cornice reads: “In Memory of
the Heroic Women of the Civil War.” May 31, 2013. Photograph by Allison S.
Finkelstein.
Figure 2.4: “The Spirit of Nursing” Memorial, Red Cross Headquarters, Washington
D.C. May 31, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.5: Detail of the column dedicated to Jane Delano and deceased Red Cross
Nurses, front façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War,
Washington D.C. The inscription reads: “To Jane A. Delano and 296 Nurses Who
Lost Their Lives in the War.” August 16, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.6: The Madonna della Pietà by Michelangelo, St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome.
Photograph by Stanislav Traykov, Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 2.7: ARC poster “The Greatest Mother in the World,” circa 1918. The Library
of Congress.
Figure 2.8: ARC poster “Third Red Cross Roll Call,” 1918. Library of Congress.
Figure 2.9: Nurses Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia. The
memorial is located in a section of the cemetery where WWI nurses are buried.
Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein. June 9, 2014.
Figure 2.10: Inscription in front foyer of the Memorial Building to the Women of the
World War, Washington D.C. Note that the wording of this inscription differs
slightly from what was originally planned. August 16, 2013. Photograph by Allison S.
Finkelstein.
Figure 2.11: View from the balcony of the “Hall of Service” inside the Memorial
Building to the Women of the World War, Washington D.C. August 16, 2013.
Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
xi
Figure 2.12: Detail of the sign hanging above the stage in the “Hall of Service” inside
the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War, Washington D.C. The
inscription reads: “To Commemorate Service.” August 16, 2013. Photograph by
Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.13: Detail, front façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the
World War, Washington D.C. May 31, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.14: East façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War,
Washington D.C. August 16, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.15: South (back) façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the
World War with the Jane Delano Memorial in the foreground, Washington D.C. May
31, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.16: Front foyer with the interior memorial columns and a portrait of Jane
Delano. Memorial Building to the Women of the World War, Washington D.C.
August 16, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.17: Detail of the column dedicated to the women of the YMCA and YWCA,
east façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War, Washington
D.C. The inscription reads: “To the Women with the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A.”
Figure 2.18: Memorial lamp dedicated to Mabel Boardman located on the eastern end
of the front façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War,
Figure 2.19: Detail of the blank column, west façade of the Memorial Building to the
Women of the World War, Washington D.C. August 16, 2013. Photograph by Allison
S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.20: President Herbert Hoover and First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, a WOSL
member, lay a wreath at the dedication of the Memorial Building to the Women of the
World War, 1930. RG 200, NACP.
Figure 2.21: “Unveiling Am. Legion Column World War Memorial (E Street
Building).” 1930. General Pershing is on the left side of the column with ARC nurses
behind him. RG 200, NACP.
Figure 2.22: Unveiling the columns dedicated to the YMCA, YWCA, and Knights of
Columbus, 1930. RG 200, NACP.
Figure 3.1: “1918-1921, Mrs. Alice French, Founder, Indianapolis, Indiana.”
American War Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler,
xii
Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial
Foundation.
Figure 3.2: Back cover of “The Indianan,” Volume I, Number 10, July 1921. The
caption aligns the AWM with the American Legion and it’s auxiliary. Papers of John
J. Pershing. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
Figure 3.3: Photograph of the African-American members of the AWM segregated
from the 1935 National Convention in Washington D.C. and denied admittance to the
Wardman Park Hotel. The photograph was titled: “Their Sons Died, but They Were
Turned Down,” Baltimore Afro-American, 12 Oct 1935, pg. 5. ProQuest Historical
Newspapers.
Figure 3.4: Image of a member of the AWM placing a wreath at Tomb of Unknown
Soldier, 1937. The woman is probably National President Mrs. Boone. American War
Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s
Memorial Foundation Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial Foundation.
Figure 3.5: A photograph of AWM National President Mrs. Ochiltree raising the flag
on the roof of the U.S. Capitol on Armistice Day in 1934. American War Mothers
National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s Memorial
Foundation Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial Foundation.
Figure 3.6: The American War Mothers Memorial Home in Aurora, CO. American
War Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s
Figure 3.7: Reverse side of the flier “Wear a Carnation.” Papers of John J. Pershing.
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
Figure 3.8: “Mrs. Lenore H. Stone pictured with the architect and contractor before
the American War Mothers Home, in Aurora, Colorado, after the completion of the
Margaret N. McCluer Annex.” 27 Sept 1944. American War Mothers National
Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s Memorial Foundation
Figure 3.9: “On the day of the dedication, September 27, 1944, Mrs. Margaret N.
McCluer (center front) was pictured with those taking part in the ceremonies, at the
entrance of the Missouri Cottage.” American War Mothers National Headquarters
Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
Figure 3.10: “The above photograph was taken during the dedication ceremonies of
the presentation to the American War Mothers of the Margaret N. McCluer Annex
and the Missouri Cottage,” 1944. American War Mothers National Headquarters
xiii
Figure 4.1: An early aerial view of the Somme American Cemetery and Memorial,
undated. Note the strictly symmetrical layout of the cemetery. National Archives,
College Park.
Figure 4.2: View of the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial looking
toward the chapel. Note the park-like landscape, the square, the symmetrical grave
plots separated by rows of trees, and the expertly manicured landscape. July 2012.
Figure 4.3: Montfaucon American Monument, France. Note the height of this
classically inspired monument and the stairs leading up to its perch on the top of a
large hill. July 2012. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 4.4: Tyne Cot Cemetery, Belgium. This British cemetery is run by the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the British equivalent and predecessor of
the American Battle Monuments Commission. May 2009. Photograph by Allison S.
Finkelstein.
Figure 4.5: The symbolic bag of French soil given to Pilgrim Mrs. Julia C.
Underwood by La Société Bienvenue Française. Julia C. Underwood Pilgrimage
Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri. Photograph
courtesy of the National WWI Museum.
Figure 4.6: Julia C. Underwood’s Pilgrimage medals. From left to right: the Official
War Department Medal, United States Lines Medal, and Gold Star pin. Julia C.
Underwood Pilgrimage Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City,
Missouri. Photograph courtesy of the National WWI Museum.
Figure 4.7: YWCA Hostess House at Plattsburg Barracks. From “Report of Hostess
House Committee.” Note its stylistic similarity to the Gold Star pilgrimage rest
houses. War Work Council, National Board of the Young Woman’s Christian
Associations, Note the large front porch, front gable, and other elements that show a
similarity to the Gold Star rest houses. From:
<https://archive.org/details/reportofhostessh00nati>
Figure 4.8: Party “O”—August 19, 1931. “In front of Rest House, Meuse-Argonne
American Cemetery. Captain [Boyette], Lieutenant Wiley, Cemetery Superintendent
Shields, Major Campbell.” National Archives, College Park.
Figure 4.9: Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial, rest house, undated. Note
the landscaping around the building which included what appear to be plants growing
up the porch supports. National Archives, College Park.
xiv
Figure 4.10: Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial, rest house, undated.
Note the ‘private’ sign that indicated that the rest house was not to be entered by
regular cemetery visitors. National Archives, College Park.
Figure 4.11: St. Mihiel American Cemetery and Memorial, rest house, undated.
Positioned close to a grave plot, this rest house must have been visible to most of the
cemetery’s visitors while the nearby graves provided a stark reminder of the purpose
of the pilgrimage. This image encapsulates the pilgrimage’s combination of
permanent statuary memorials and veteranist-commemorations. National Archives,
College Park.
Figure 4.12: Lt. Lucas giving an illustrated talk to pilgrims at the Rest House at St.
Mihiel Cemetery, undated. This image demonstrates the contrast between the
military and the home-like atmosphere of the rest houses. Note the exposed beams in
the ceiling; these were a common feature in arts and crafts style architecture. National
Archives, College Park.
Figure 4.13: Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial, Visitor’s Building,
1932. This structure’s stonework and arches evoke the sensibilities of the French
Romanesque Revival style. National Archives, College Park.
Figure 5.1: View of the northwest corner of the Spanish American War Memorial,
Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein. June 9,
2014.
Figure 5.2: Photograph of a display case from the NSCDA uniform exhibition in the
1920s. From left to right: Uniform of the Motor Division, National League for
Women’s Service; Uniforms of Captain of the Motor Corps, National League for
Women’s Service; Uniforms of Major on Staff and Supervisor of Instruction, First
National Service School; and Uniforms of the American Friends Service Committee.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History,
Division of Armed Forces History.
Figure 5.3: Photograph of another display case from the NSCDA uniform exhibition
in the 1920s. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of
American History, Division of Armed Forces History.
Figure 5.4: Photograph of another display case from the NSCDA uniform exhibition
in the 1920s. Drawings of the uniforms as they were worn appear in between each set
of clothing. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American
History, Division of Armed Forces History.
Figure 5.5: The Women’s Overseas Service League ribbon included with an
American Friends Service Committee uniform at the National Museum of American
History, Washington D.C. September 3, 2014. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
xv
Figure 5.6: “Marinettes” on White House Lawn,” c. 1919. Library of Congress.
Figure 5.7: “Navy Yeoman (F) in white summer dress uniform,” c. 1916-1919 (most
likely 1919). Library of Congress.
Figure 5.8: “Yeoman (F). Navy Department: Inspection,” 1919. Library of Congress.
Figure 5.9: The “Women of Two Wars” article that appeared in The Saturday
Evening Post. Illustrations by Helen Virginia Meyer and photographs by Elliot
Clarke. The Saturday Evening Post 215, no. 48 (May, 1943):26-27. Academic Search
Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 6, 2015). Copyright The Saturday Evening
Post and the Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society.
Figure 6.1: The ending vignette of the “Remember My Forgotten Man” number. Used
with permission from the core collection, production files of the Margaret Herrick
Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Figure 6.2: Busby Berkeley’s grave at the Desert Memorial Park Cemetery, Cathedral
City, CA. Photography by Arthur Koykka from: <http://www.findagrave.com/cgibin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=1326>
Figure 7.1: George Price’s cartoon that depicted a WWI “Donut Dolly” going back to
work during WWII. Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI
Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
Figure 7.2: FDR signs the G.I. Bill in the Oval Office with (l to r) Bennett “Champ”
Clark, J. Hardin Peterson, John Ranking, Paul Cunningham, Edith N. Rogers, J.M.
Sullivan, Walter George, Robert Wagner, (unknown), and Alben Barkley. Note that
Rogers, leaning down towards FDR with great interest, is the only women in this June
22, 1944 image. FDR Library Photo Collection, NPx 64-269.
Figure 7.3: “Women in War” mural, center section, by Daniel MacMorris inside
Memory Hall at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial. August
2012. Photograph courtesy of the National WWI Museum.
Figure 7.4: “Blue Star Mothers,” the right part of the “Women in War” mural by
Daniel MacMorris inside Memory Hall at the National World War I Museum at
Liberty Memorial. August 2012. Photograph courtesy of the National WWI Museum.
Figure 7.5: “Gold Star Mothers,” the left section of the “Women in War” mural by
Figure 7.6: The Women in Military Service for America Memorial (WIMSA) at
Arlington National Cemetery, (foreground) visible underneath Arlington House
xvi
(background). Inside the memorial are exhibits about the history of American
women’s military service. February 2015. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 7.7: Former Yeoman (F) Third Class Frieda Hardin (center) waves to the
crowd after her speech at the dedication ceremony for the Women in Military Service
for America Memorial on October 18, 1997 at Arlington National Cemetery,
Virginia. Her son, Captain Jerald Kristen, USNR (Ret) stands on her left and
Brigadier General Wilma L. Vaught, USAF (Ret), the President of the Women in
Military Service for American Memorial Foundation, Inc. stands on her right.
Figure 7.8: During an Honor Flight San Diego trip, World War II Army Air Corps
veteran Morton Gollin speaks to visiting schoolchildren about his experiences as a
German POW while sitting at the National World War II Memorial in Washington
Figure 7.9: John and Beverly Rougas, both World War II veterans who served in the
Marine Corps, stand with two current Marines at the Iwo Jima Memorial during
Honor Flight San Diego’s trip to Washington D.C. May 3, 2014. Photograph by
Figure 8.1: “Migrant Mother” or “Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven
children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California.” Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of the
Library of Congress. <http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b29516>
Figure 8.2: Gassed by John Singer Sargent, 1919. Imperial War Museum. ©IWM
(Art.IWM ART1460) <http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/23722>
xvii
List of Abbreviations
ABMC: American Battle Monuments Commission
AEF: American Expeditionary Forces
AFI: American Film Institute
ARC: American Red Cross
AWM: American War Mothers
BEF: Bonus Expeditionary Force
CFA: Commission of Fine Arts
DAR: Daughters of the American Revolution
GRS: Graves Registration Service
IWM: Imperial War Museum
NMAH: National Museum of American History
NSCDA: National Society of the Colonial Dames of America
VFW: Veterans of Foreign Wars
WAAC: Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps
WAC: Women’s Army Corps
WAVES: Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service
WILPF: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
WIMSA: Women in Military Service for American Memorial
WOSL: Women’s Overseas Service League
YMCA: Young Men’s Christian Association
YWCA: Young Women’s Christian Association
xviii
Introduction
In 1924, in the French commune of Issy-les-Molineaux, just outside of Paris, work
began on a memorial to Katherine Baker. An American woman who volunteered in
Europe as a nurse during World War One, Baker first aided wounded French soldiers,
and then worked with the American Red Cross to nurse American troops. Baker
continued her work overseas even after she became ill on the job. She never
recovered, and died in 1919 upon her return to the United States. Mrs. Ada Knowlton
Chew, another American woman who served overseas during the war and afterwards
helped found the Women’s Overseas Service League, led a committee of mostly
American women that decided, in cooperation with a French committee, to create a
memorial in Baker’s honor. But these committees did not choose to erect a stone
statue or a formal monument. They decided to construct a living memorial building
that housed a war orphanage for destitute French girls. To honor Baker and the other
American women who died as a result of their overseas service, these committees
preferred to build a memorial that could help the war’s survivors, rather than
constructing a statuary monument. 1 This preference for service-based memorials in
place of statues represented a choice repeatedly made during the interwar period by
the American women who served and sacrificed in the First World War.
The commemoration of the First World War deeply impacted American culture
between 1917 and 1945, and incited a contentious debate about the best forms of
1
Carry On, pg. 12, Vol. III, May 1924, No. 2, Folder: 1924, Box: 1922-1932; Carry On, pg. 42, Vol.
IV, No. 1, Feb. 1927, Folder: 1927, Box 1922-1932; Carry On, pg. 7, Vol. XV, Feb. 1936, No. 1,
Folder: 1936, Box: 1933-1939, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On Periodical
1
military memorialization. All kinds of American women participated in
commemorations alongside men, the government, veterans, and the military. Even
more frequently, they followed in the footsteps of the women who commemorated the
Civil War and took part in predominantly female memorialization projects, many of
which involved aiding veterans. 2
Organizations composed of American women who believed they served or
sacrificed during the First World War defined community service and veterans
advocacy as forms of commemoration that they pursued in addition to, or sometimes
instead of, more permanent forms of commemoration. In keeping with women’s
contributions to the war effort and their Progressive era service and reform work,
many American women pursued service-based commemorative projects to serve the
nation in ways normally prohibited to them because of gender-based restrictions on
their citizenship.
This dissertation investigates how American women who served during the First
World War commemorated the conflict during the interwar period and through the
end of World War Two. What exactly did these women commemorate? Did they
commemorate their own wartime contributions, those of American men, or both? Did
their commemorative work differ from that of other Americans, and if so, how? How
much of an impact did they make on the commemorative discourse in interwar
America? What evidence of their memorialization activities remains? Did these
2
For example, the Women’s Relief Corps helped needy Union veterans. Francesca Morgan, Woman
and Patriotism in Jim Crow America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 12.
Patrick J. Kelly, Creating a National Home: Building the Veteran’s Welfare State, 1860-1900
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997). Kelly described women’s extensive
philanthropic and volunteer work helping returning Union soldiers after the Civil War.
2
women use their wartime experiences to push for more political rights or greater
inclusion in the military? How have their wartime experiences been remembered in
the American historical and commemorative narrative of World War One?
I employ the term “veteranist-commemorations” to describe the service-based
memorialization projects conducted by American women who served or sacrificed in
the First World War, women who I have termed female “veteranist-commemorators.”
Rejecting traditional monuments, veteranist-commemorations placed the plight of
male and female veterans at the center of their memorialization efforts. Veteranistcommemorations did not solely address veterans of strictly defined military service,
but included anyone who sacrificed during the war, such as Gold Star family
members who lost relatives in the conflict, women who served or volunteered
overseas or on the home front outside of the official military apparatus, and the
families of present and former members of the military.
Female veteranist-commemorators pioneered a new form of commemoration that
revolutionized American memorial practices. Their actions forced Americans to rethink their commemorative practices and provided a new way to conceptualize the
definition of a memorial. Through their outspoken support of veteranistcommemorations, these women promoted a type of commemoration that included
intangible actions, human bodies, and ephemeral activities as crucial, defined parts of
the memorialization process. In doing so, female veteranist-commemorators changed
the course of American military commemoration, even though their memorialization
methods did not gain as widespread acceptance as they hoped.
3
Defined broadly, veteranist-commemorations included any type of community
service, philanthropy, relief, welfare, donation, charity, aid, or advocacy work done to
honor or memorialize an individual man, woman, group, or event related to the war.
These activities could be both intangible and tangible, permanent and impermanent,
and they sometimes included more traditional statuary memorials and ceremonies.
The war created new communities of veterans, widows, surviving family members,
and wounded warriors that female veteranist-commemorators sought to support.
Veteranist-commemorations could involve helping disabled veterans, advocating for
veterans’ rights, supporting the next of kin of military casualties, enabling relatives to
visit battlefield graves, pursuing peace efforts, or making monetary donations to a
range of charitable causes, such as utilitarian memorials and living memorials.
Veteranist-commemorations developed around the turn of the nineteenth century and
became more popular during and after the First World War. A utilitarian memorial or
living memorial referred to any memorial structure and activities that served a useful
purpose in a community at the same time that it operated as a monument. This
differed greatly from statuary memorials, which usually only had an aesthetic, artistic,
or commemorative purpose. Utilitarian and living memorials often took the form of
structures such as stadiums, bandstands, auditoriums, theatres, observation towers,
bridges, hospitals, schools, museums, and churches. Living memorial buildings,
sometimes also called “liberty buildings,” became especially popular since they could
both contribute to a community or a cause and be designed to include the decorative
4
elements that made statuary monuments so popular. 3 During the interwar period,
some female veteranist-commemorators understood utilitarian and living memorials
as a way to try to combine elements of statuary memorials with community service.
In contrast to more traditional and permanent forms of memorialization,
veteranist-commemorations were often temporary and ephemeral, lasting only as long
as the women who conducted this work. Rooted in the bodies of these women,
veteranist-commemorations were distinctly corporeal. In contrast to inanimate
statues, veteranist-commemorations embodied the memory of the dead in the actions
of the living. Veteranist-commemorations were at once connected to and the
antithesis of the more traditional cemeteries and monuments that proliferated during
the interwar period, since the women who conducted veteranist-commemorations
sometimes did so in conjunction with more traditional commemorative rites. But
because so many of the women’s veteranist-commemoration projects were intangible,
they left little permanent evidence on the landscape and in American historical
memory. This obscured the importance and influence of women’s interwar
memorialization activities, their impact on the commemorative discourse, and the
significance of the First World War to the American culture.
As they pursued veteranist-commemorations, women in the organizations studied
fought to include the history of American women’s contributions to the First World
War into the historical and commemorative narrative. They wanted American women
to be honored and memorialized for their wartime services and sacrifices alongside
3
For information on “liberty buildings” see: Kristin L. Britanik, “Where are the Ladies’ Rest Rooms?:
The Evolution of Women-Only Resting Rooms Amid Social Changes of the Early Twentieth-Century,”
Master’s thesis, The University of Maryland, College Park, 2012; 69.
5
American men. In particular, the women who served overseas or in uniform wanted
to be considered veterans, even if they did not officially serve in the military and did
not meet the government’s definition of a veteran. Women correctly feared that
history might obscure the legacy of their wartime services, and they did their best to
prevent such historical amnesia. At the same time that the government and the
military supported their efforts to commemorate women’s wartime contributions, they
only allotted women a temporary and partial place in the official military memory of
the war, and they reduced women’s postwar opportunities for military service. It was
not until the Second World War, when women were needed to support the armed
forces once more, that women’s services to the military became recognized again,
although the World War Two servicewomen somewhat overshadowed the legacy of
their predecessors. It took a member of the Women’s Overseas Service League,
Representative Edith Nourse Rogers (R-MA), who served overseas with the YMCA
and the Red Cross during World War One, to pass legislation in 1942 and 1943 that
allowed women more opportunities to serve in the military and obtain the veterans
benefits previously denied them.
Women who pursued veteranist-commemorations tried to influence military
policy, national defense, and the evolving veterans’ welfare state. They reminded the
nation that women had fulfilled the duties of martial citizenship in wartime even
before all women been granted the franchise. By continuing their wartime service
after the Armistice, they demonstrated women’s commitment to national service and
their desire to gain the equal citizenship rights and opportunities for military service
still denied to them. Although they hoped that the First World War had truly been
6
‘The War to End All Wars,’ they wanted the next generation of American women to
obtain more equal opportunities for military service. 4
Veteranist-commemorations did not achieve a clear victory over statuary
memorials and did not become the dominant form of memorialization during the
interwar era. They were often used in conjunction with or in addition to traditional
commemorative activities. Female veteranist-commemorators did not always
completely reject traditional types of commemoration. They took steps forward and
backward as they promoted and developed veteranist-commemorations. Although
veteranist-commemorations deeply impacted American culture and society and
continued to be used into the Second World War and beyond, my story has no clearcut before and after. Female veteranist-commemorators formed the avant-garde of the
Americans involved in the interwar commemorative discourse. They realized that
their preferred form of commemoration was often viewed as an alternative to the
popular and more mainstream traditional statuary memorial projects that continued to
flourish.
Female veteranist-commemorators believed they served and sacrificed during
the war, just like men in the armed forces. They created a broad and inclusive
definition of women’s wartime services and sacrifices. This definition incorporated
all forms of women’s contributions to the war effort. They expanded the definition of
military service to include the diverse types of women’s wartime activities and
4
This argument contrasts with Francesca Morgan’s argument that many women’s patriotic groups,
especially those active before WWI, reinforced women’s exclusion from military service and
supported “men-centered nationalism” even as they championed women’s political activism. During
WWI, however, some of these groups did begin to support measures that gave women political
standing. Morgan, 4, 101, 105.
7
defined these as a category of martial citizenship equal to men’s official military
service.
Service included any of the women who officially or unofficially served
overseas or on the home front in any way. This included the women who served in
the Army or Navy Nurse Corps, the Navy Yeoman (F), the Women Marines, and any
of the dozens of civilian welfare organizations such as the American Red Cross
(ARC) and the YMCA. It encompassed the civilian women employed by the military
in clerical work, in communications, as health-care workers, or in any number of
other capacities and organizations. This definition also included all forms of women’s
unpaid volunteer work and paid labor on the home front, from knitting bandages to
working in a factory or farming the land. Motherhood constituted a wartime service,
since according to the ideals of republican motherhood, American women served the
nation by raising strong, moral sons to join the military. Widows, military wives, and
families also fit into this definition of service. As long as a woman somehow
contributed to the war effort, her service needed to be acknowledged, no matter how
small or large.
Women’s wartime sacrifices were defined just as broadly and encompassed
the women who made sacrifices of their own free will and the women whose
sacrifices were involuntary due to a wartime tragedy. Sacrifices varied from women
who endured physical injuries, illnesses, or emotional damage because of their
wartime service, to women who donated their time and money to the war effort and
put their country before their own needs. The sacrifices of Gold Star mothers or
widows who lost a child or husband during the war received special attention. Gold
8
Star women and their family members were considered to have sacrificed their loved
ones for the nation. Equal status was accorded to the women who were injured or died
in wartime service and Gold Star women.
After the war, many women formed and participated in organizations based on
their wartime services and sacrifices, and they pursued veteranist-commemorations
through these groups. Such organizations included the Women’s Overseas Service
League (WOSL), the American War Mothers (AWM), the American Gold Star
Mothers, Inc., the National Yeoman (F) (NYF), and the National Organization of
World War Nurses, among others. Some women who were officially in military
service also joined the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW),
and some even formed all-female posts of these groups. 5 Throughout the interwar
period, female veteranist-commemorators interacted and cooperated with the
American Legion, the VFW, and their auxiliaries; other women’s’ organizations
unrelated to the war such as the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America;
independent female and male supporters; and other groups of female veteranistcommemorators. Many organizations without direct ties to female veteranistcommemorators also pursued aspects of veteranist-commemorations.
Although both the American Legion and the VFW created women’s
auxiliaries that frequently conducted veteranist-commemorations, their membership
criteria excludes them from the group investigated by this study. Members of these
auxiliaries gained admittance based on the organizational membership and military
5
Janie Blankenship, ed., VFW Magazine: Women at War, From the Revolutionary War to the Present,
Special Publication (July 2011), 57, 59, <
http://www.vfw.org/uploadedFiles/VFW.org/News_and_Events/VFWWomenatWar-LOWRES.pdf>
(11 Feb 2015).
9
service of their husband, father, brother, or son, not based on women’s own services
and sacrifices. 6 Although these female auxiliaries emerged because their members
served and sacrificed during the war and wanted to continue that service, and
although their male counterparts recognized and valued their service, these
organizations were still based on men’s membership in the main organization. At the
1925 American Legion National Convention, the Auxiliary’s President, Mrs. Claire
Oliphant, explained this difference. She declared that “we are unique among women’s
organizations because we are the only women’s organization that takes its entire
program of activity from a man’s organization.” 7 Likewise, membership in the Ladies
Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign Wars was also based on a familial relationship to
a male member of the VFW. 8 This membership distinction differentiated these
auxiliaries from the organizations that women established based on their own wartime
services and sacrifices, distinct from any connections to men. Nevertheless, these
auxiliaries and their male counterpart organizations still conducted veteranistcommemorations, sometimes in conjunction with organizations of female veteranistcommemorators. Most famously, the American Legion and VFW Auxiliaries
6
William Pencak, For God & Country: The American Legion, 1919-1941 (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 1989), 296-301; Mrs. Jos. H. Thompson, History: National American Legion
Auxiliary Vol. 1 (Pittsburgh, PA: Jackson-Remlinger Printing Co., 1926), 34, 36-41; Frank Ernest Hill,
The American Legion Auxiliary, A History: 1924-1934 (Indianapolis, IN: American Legion Auxiliary,
1935), 5-8.
7
Ibid, 297.
8
Ladies Auxiliary to the Veterans of Foreign War, “Membership Application Form,” Ladies Auxiliary
to the Veterans of Foreign War, 2011 <http://www.ladiesauxvfw.org/membership-application-form/>
(29 December 2014); Herbert Molloy Mason, Jr., VFW: Our First Century (Lenexa, KS: Addax
Publishing Group, 1999), 23, 149, 170-173. Women who served overseas while officially in military
service were allowed to join the VFW after WWI but membership was barred to them starting in 1944
and did re-open until 1978.
10
provided immense support to both organizations’ poppy sales that funded disabled
veterans. 9
Female veteranist-commemorations were distinguished by their uniquely
female attributes that developed from, and often continued, the work done by women
before and during the war. As historian Susan Zeiger explained, women’s wartime
work emerged from the sex-segregated wage work performed by women in the early
twentieth-century such as nursing, clerical work, and telephone operation. These
became important skills required by the military during the war. 10 Women also
utilized their skills from their Progressive era reform work that aided children,
families, the needy, the infirm, immigrants, and the disabled.
Female veteranist-commemorators’ focus on service activities, and their use
of the words “service,” held several layers of significance for turn of the century
America, not all of which they approved. Service could refer to military service like
that of men, as these women often professed was the case. It could also denote unpaid
volunteer and community service similar to women’s Progressive era undertakings,
which often fit well with their wartime volunteer activities and postwar veteranistcommemorations. But service also alluded to women’s work in domestic service as
servants, and women’s unpaid labor at home serving and caring for their families and
husbands. Women often disliked these connotations as they tried to define their
9
Penack, 298.
Susan Zeiger, In Uncle Sam’s Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary Force,
1917-1919 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), 3.
10
11
wartime work as military service and assert their professionalism in their various
fields. 11
Likewise, the word “volunteer” had two meanings during this time period.
First, in the military context, it could refer to people who volunteered for paid
military service as opposed to those who served in the armed forces because they
were drafted. Second, in the civilian context, it could refer to people, frequently
women, who volunteered to do unpaid work; this was often referred to as
“volunteerism.” During the Progressive era and throughout World War One and its
aftermath, many women pushed to professionalize the activities they did as
volunteers. They often mixed professional employment with voluntary activities.
Especially after the war, many women built professional, paid careers from their
unpaid volunteer work as they tried to professionalize their fields and assert the
monetary worth of their skills. 12
Before the war, many of the women who participated in the war effort and
later championed veteranist-commemorations had connections to the Progressive
movement and the suffrage campaign. Many of these women were politically active,
committed volunteers and paid, career-oriented professionals in their communities
who learned about memorialization from their mothers and grandmothers who had
commemorated the Civil War. For example, Lena Hitchcock, who served overseas
with the Army as an occupational therapist and became a National President of the
11
Zeiger provides a detailed explanation of these different meanings of women’s WWI service. Zeiger,
51, 69,141.
12
For more about the professionalization of women’s wartime service, specifically in the field of
rehabilitation (now called physical therapy), see: Beth Linker, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World
War I America (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2011).
12
WOSL, was from a prominent family in Washington D.C.’s elite society. Prior to the
war, she followed the lead of her mother, Virginia White Speel, the daughter of a
Union officer in the Civil War who was active in the Republican Party, and
participated in Republican politics and volunteer work. In 1916, she served as the
chairman of the third precinct of the Washington D.C. branch of the suffragist
Congressional Union, the predecessor of the National Woman’s Party. 13
Many, but by no means all, female veteranist-commemorators, like Lena
Hitchcock, were from the middle and upper-classes. American women from the lower
and middle-classes joined forces with more elite women such as WOSL member First
Lady Lou Henry Hoover, American Red Cross leader Mabel Boardman,
Representative Edith Nourse Rogers, and Representative Helen Douglas Mankin.
From Toledo, Ohio, to Paris, France, women from all walks of life banded together to
pursue veteranist-commemorations. Although popular images frequently presented
these women as mostly from the wealthy, upper class, as Susan Zeiger argued about
the women who served overseas with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), the
“vast majority of AEF servicewomen were wage earners, white, literate, lowermiddle class, and often self-supporting.” 14 One such woman was Merle Egan
Anderson, an active member of the Seattle WOSL unit. Before the war, she worked
13
Lena Hitchcock, The Great Adventure, MS 22, Box 240 and “Lena Hitchcock oral history (03), 14
July 1982, recorded by the WOSL, UC –MS022/7 Lena Hitchcock: MS 22 Box 182, The Women’s
Overseas Service League Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collection;
Jessi Ash Arndt, “Family Home Of Mrs. Speel Historic Spot,” The Washington Post, Jul. 27, 1937, pg.
13, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “Mrs. Virginia W. Speel: Republican Committeewoman for
Many Years Dies in Capital,” New York Times, Apr. 14, 1945, pg. 15, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers; “Suffragists at Work Here: Congressional Union Selects Committees in All Police
Precincts,” The Washington Post, Sept. 3, 1916, pg. A5, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; Nancy F.
Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 53-81.
14
Zeiger, 2.
13
as a telephone operator in Montana. She volunteered to go to France in 1918 as part
of the ‘Hello Girls,’ the telephone operators employed by the U.S. Army Signal
Corps. She later acted as the chief telephone operator for the Paris Peace Conference.
After the war, when she volunteered to help hospitalized veterans with the WOSL in
1926, she discovered that unlike the women who served in the Yeoman (F), the
undefined status of the ‘Hello Girls’ made them ineligible to receive the World War
One Victory Medal and veterans benefits. That year, she began to lead what became a
long, but ultimately successful fight to gain veteran status for the ‘Hello Girls.’ 15
Despite the prevalence of working-class women, overseas service was mostly
limited to white, native-born women, although some Jewish women, and an even
smaller group of African-American women, did serve overseas. 16 On the home front,
however, all types of women supported the war effort. Even with racial segregation
and other restrictions, minorities had more opportunities to participate stateside; this
enabled some of them to become veteranist-commemorators after the war.
15
“WWI ‘Hello Girl’ Merle Egan Anderson is Dead,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, pg. D2, 3 June 1986;
Sally Gene Mahoney, “1918 Operator Still Seeks Justice After 50 Years,” The Seattle Times, pg. H6,
20 Jul. 1975, Folder: News clippings of Signal Corps telephone Operator Merle Egan Anderson WOSL
Seattle Unit, no box, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI Museum
Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
16
Zeiger, 27-32. Zeiger estimates that only three African-American women served overseas during the
war as YMCA secretaries and that around a dozen arrives in April 1919. For more about AfricanAmerican women’s wartime service see: Nancy Marie Robertson, Christian Sisterhood, Race
Relations, and the YWCA, 1906-46 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2007); Addie W.
Hunton and Kathryn M. Johnson, Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces (New
York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1997); Mark Whalan, The Great War and the Culture of the New Negro
(Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2008); Morgan, Women and Patriotism in Jim Crow
America. Despite the founding of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1908, no
African-American nurses were allowed to serve in France and only with the onset of the influenza
epidemic were African-American nurses accepted for service at military bases in the U.S. Zeiger, 28.
For more on the history of African-American female nurses, see: Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in
White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950 (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1989).
14
Postwar female veteranist-commemorations remained predominantly racially
segregated and female veteranist-commemorators disagreed with each other about
racial policies. Like many women’s organizations before the war, such as the Young
Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), the Women’s Relief Corps, and the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and like the AEF during the war, most
female veteranist-commemorators in organizations segregated African-American
women into separate chapters, if they were allowed to participate at all. 17 Most
famously, the U.S. government segregated the Gold Star pilgrimages of widows and
mothers to overseas cemeteries, a choice that angered and divided AfricanAmericans. 18 While female veteranist-commemorators frequently argued about the
best way to accommodate African-American women, but they rarely reached a
consensus. Some members believed in the importance of adhering to Jim Crow and
the undesirability of including African-American women. Other white members took
more radical stances and pushed to include African-American women alongside white
women, perhaps because of the close ties between the earlier abolitionist movement
and suffrage. No matter what they believed, female veteranist-commemorators
frequently encountered racial issues. Especially as the 1930s progressed, the efforts of
African-American women to be included in their activities meant that white women
could not ignore the question of race, even if they could not reach a solution
amenable to all participants.
17
Morgan, 118. For more about gender, race, and Progressive women see: Frankel and Dye.
See chapter 22 “Stars of Black and Gold,” in: Lisa M. Budreau, Bodies of War: World War I and
the Politics of Commemoration in America, 1919-1933
(New York: New York University Press, 2010).
18
15
This dissertation builds on the rich and voluminous field of scholarship on
American historical memory, proposing that historians should expand the definition
of commemoration to include community service and advocacy activities. 19 This
study follows the lead of other scholars, chiefly Kurt Pieher and Kirk Savage, who
have specifically investigated the cultural importance and contentious nature of
American military memory and commemoration. 20 As a cultural history that includes
a diverse range of interdisciplinary sources, I draw on David Blight’s Race and
Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. 21 My notion of commemoration as
sometimes being embodied in the actions of the living people who commemorate
takes inspiration from Alison Landsberg’s Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of
American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture and Steven Trout’s interpretation
of texts and literature as memorials in Memorial Fictions: Willa Cather and the First
World War. 22
19
The historiography of American memory includes, but is not limited to the following sources which
influenced this study: David Thelen, “Memory and American History,” The Journal of American
History 75, No. 4 (March 1998):1117-1129; A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the
Historical Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) and Michael Kammen, Mystic
Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 199); John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in
the Twentieth Century (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992); Edward T. Linenthal
and Tom Engelhardt, eds. History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996); Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in
America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010).
20
Kurt Piehler, Remembering War the American Way (Washington D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1995); Kirk Savage, Standing Soldier, Kneeling Slave: Race, War and National Identity in NineteenthCentury America (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997); Kirk Savage, Monument
Wars: Washington D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Kristin Ann Hass, Sacrificing Soldiers on the
National Mall (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013).
21
David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001); Ari Kelman, A Misplaced Massacre:
Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013).
22
Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of
Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). I was also inspired by: Michel-Rolph
Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995);
16
Although they have become more diversified, the overwhelming number of
studies on American historical memory have focused most on the contentious
memory of the Civil War and the Vietnam War. 23 The field of Civil War memory has
expanded to include gendered studies of memory, many of which focus on women’s
participation in memorialization. These works have shown how examinations of
military memory through the eyes of American women reveal valuable insights about
the memorialization process and American culture and society. 24 Inspired by these
works, my dissertation aims to conduct a similar study on American women’s
commemorations of the First World War.
Until the past ten years, the memory of the First World War in America has
received much less attention from scholars than the memory of the Civil War,
Steven Trout, Memorial Fictions: Willa Cather and the First World War (Lincoln, NE: University of
Nebraska Press, 2002).
23
For example: Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920
(Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1980) and Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the
Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1985); Carol Reardon, Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Gary Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, & Forgotten: How
Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know About the Civil War (Chapel Hill: The University
of North Carolina Press, 2008); William A. Blair, Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the
Civil War in the South, 1865-1914 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Jerry
Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: New York
University Press, 2000) and Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories; The Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic,
and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1997); Kristin
Ann Hass, Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Berkeley,
California: University of California Press, 1998); Patrick Hagopian, The Vietnam War in American
Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2009).
24
Nina Silber, The Romance of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Karen L Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of
the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville, Florida: University Press
of Florida, 2003); Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson, eds. , Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women,
Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory (Knoxville, Tennessee: The University of Tennessee
Press, 2003); Caroline E. Janney, Burying the Dead But Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations
& the Lost Cause (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Francesca Morgan, Woman
and Patriotism in Jim Crow America.
17
Vietnam, and World War Two. 25 My work grew from recent studies of the American
memory of World War One and expands the scholarly understanding of the war’s
memory in the U.S. through a focus on the women who served and sacrificed in the
war and pursued veteranist-commemorations. The essays in Unknown Soldiers: The
American Expeditionary Forces in Memory and Remembrance, edited by Mark A.
Snell, presented a sample of how the First World War’s memory can be studied. It
demonstrated how much more work there is to be done on this topic. 26 Steven Trout’s
On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance,
1919-1941 offered a cultural history of the American memory of the First World War
that argued that the war had powerful influence on interwar America. 27 In Bodies of
War: World War I and the Politics of Commemoration in America, 1919-1933, Lisa
Budreau examined American commemorations of the war through the issues of the
repatriation of the soldier dead, the establishment of the American Battle Monuments
Commission (ABMC), the Gold Star Mothers and Widows Pilgrimages, and an
analysis of the political motivations of these commemorative projects. 28 My work
25
Similarly, the memory of the American Revolution has only recently begun to receive more
concentrated attention by historians. For years, Kammen’s Season of Youth: The American Revolution
and the Historical Imagination was one of the few works to cover this topic. More recent examinations
include: Alfred F. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution
(2000); Andrew Burstein, America’s Jubilee: July 4, 1826: A Generation Remembers the Revolution
after Fifty Years of Independence (2001); Sarah Purcell, Sealed With Blood: War, Sacrifice, and
Memory in the Revolutionary America (2002); and Francois Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father:
Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (2006). For studies of the memory of the
Second World War see for example: John Bodnar, The “Good War” in American Memory (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
26
Mark A. Snell, ed., Unknown Soldiers: The American Expeditionary Forces in Memory and
Remembrance (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2008).
27
Steven Trout, On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance,
1919-1941 (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 2010), 1, 252.
28
Budreau, Bodies of War: World War I and the Politics of Commemoration in America, 1919-1933;
Lisa M. Budreau, “The Politics of Remembrance: The Gold Star Mothers’ Pilgrimage and America’s
Fading Memory of the Great War,” The Journal of Military History, Vol. 72, No. 2 (April 2008); 371411. The process of recovering and burying WWI fallen soldiers is also examined in: Michael Sledge
18
continues and develops the discourse she began, along with several other authors who
focused on the ABMC cemeteries and the Gold Star Pilgrimages, especially Rebecca
Jo Plant’s Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America and Ron
Robin’s Enclaves of America: The Rhetoric of American Political Architecture
Abroad, 1900-1965. 29
I also draw on the extensive scholarship on the memory of the First World
War in Europe, Canada, and Australia, which is larger than that focused on the U.S. 30
Most of all, I have utilized Jay Winter’s Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The
Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, & Honor Our Military Fallen (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2005).
29
Ron Robin, Enclaves of America: The Rhetoric of American Political Architecture Abroad, 19001965 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); John Graham, The Gold Star Mothers
Pilgrimages of the 1930s: Overseas Graves Visitations by Mothers and Widows of Fallen U.S. World
War I Soldiers (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., 2005); Constance Potter, “World War I Gold Star
Mothers Pilgrimages, Part I,” Prologue 31, no. 2 (Summer 1999); pp. 140-145; Constance Potter,
“World War I Gold Star Mothers Pilgrimages, Part II,” Prologue 31, no. 3 (Fall 1999); pp. 210-215;
Holly S. Fenelon, That Knock on the Door: The History of Gold Star Mothers in America
(Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2012); Rebecca Jo Plant, Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood
in Modern America; Rebecca Jo Plant, “The Gold Star Mothers Pilgrimages: Patriotic Maternalists and
Their Critics in Interwar America” in Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare, and Social
Policy in the Twentieth Century, eds. Marian van der Klein, Rebecca Jo Plant, Nicole Sanders, and
Lori R. Weintrob (New York: Bergham Books, 2012); and Lotte Larsen Meyer, “Mourning in a
Distant Land: Gold Star Pilgrimages to American Military Cemeteries in Europe, 1930-33,” Markers
20 (2003): 31-75.
30
Perhaps the most groundbreaking work in the study of the memory of the First World War in Europe
(specifically Great Britain) is Paul Fussell’s, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1975). This work uncovered the ways that the memory of the Great War has seeped
into and shaped modern life. Although it is a pivotal work in the field and has certainly influenced my
thinking, its methodology does not correspond to mine so it will not be a focus of my historiographical
research. Other examples include: Mark David Sheftall, Altered memories of the Great War: Divergent
Narratives of Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010); Mark
Connelly, The Great War, Memory and Ritual: Commemoration in the City and East London, 19161939 (Rochester, New York: Royal Historical Society, 2001); Nicholas J. Saunder, ed., Matters of
Conflict: Material Culture, Memory and the First World War (New York: Routledge, 2004); Marilène
Patten Henry, Monumental Accusations: The Monuments aux Morts as Expressions of Popular
Resentment (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1996); Richard van Emdem, The Quick and the Dead:
Fallen Soldiers and Their Families in the Great War (London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2011);
George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990); Annette Becker, War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in France, 19141930, trans. Helen McPhail (New York: Berg Publishers, 1998); Marina Larsson, Shattered Anzacs:
Living with the Scars of War (Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Press Ltd., 2009);
Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War Between Memory and History in the Twentieth
Century (New Haven, Connecticut Yale University Press, 2006).
19
Great War in European Cultural History (1995). 31 I further Winter’s argument that
cultural commemorations of the Great War are more complicated than the
‘modernist’ versus ‘traditional’ explanations that are often used, but rather represent
an overlap of the two. 32 I continue to employ the term ‘traditional’ merely for the
ease with which it describes and categorizes statuary monuments and memorials. The
American women who conducted veteranist-commemorations at once rejected and
interacted with more traditional forms of memorialization. Their tendency to combine
service-based memorial projects with statuary monuments, or to support some
conventional memorial activities, demonstrates the interplay between the ‘modernist’
and ‘traditional’ memorial rituals that Winter discussed. Traditions and cultures do
not change overnight, and during the interwar period, many female veteranistcommemorators and their allies clung to older memorial forms even as they
advocated for utilitarian memorials and pursed veteranist-commemorations. These
women did not achieve a decisive victory for veteranist-commemorations that purged
the commemorative culture of statuary memorials. Female veteranist-commemorators
did not want to do so, even if they sometimes preferred veteranist-commemorations.
Rather, they complicated the commemorative discourse, challenged older forms of
memorialization, and asked Americans to consider experimenting with veteranistcommemorations.
Accordingly, rather than rejecting it, my work complements and expands the
existing scholarship on statuary memorials and monuments, since the women I study
31
Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History
(Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
32
Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History, 3.
20
did not always completely discard these forms of commemoration. I want my work to
encourage scholars to study and include veteranist-commemorations alongside other
forms of memorialization. My work builds upon Jennifer Wingate’s comprehensive
examination of World War One commemorative sculptures. It expands her work to
show how sculptural memorials existed in conjunction with more ephemeral forms of
commemoration. 33 Wingate and Andrew M. Shanken, another art historian, both
investigate living memorials and lay the foundation for my examination of living
memorial buildings and utilitarian memorials. 34 My research deepens Shanken’s
study of the living memorials constructed during and after World War Two by further
elaborating on the living memorials of the First World War that preceded them. I
suggest that living memorials had more of an impact on the commemorative culture
at that time than Shanken granted them.
As a study of cultural memory and commemoration, my work does not
examine the history of American women’s actual participation in the First World War
in much detail. It is chiefly concerned with what these women did after the war. The
topic of women’s participation in the war has already been ably covered by Kimberly
Jensen’s Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (2008), Lettie
33
Jennifer Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America’s World War I
Memorials (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013); Jennifer Wingate, “Doughboys, Art
Worlds, and Identities: Sculpted Memories of World War I in the United States,” PhD Dissertation,
Stony Brook University, 2002; 39-52; Jennifer Wingate, “Motherhood, Memorials, and Anti-Militarism:
Bashka Paeff's “Sacrifices of War,”” Woman's Art Journal 29, No. 2 (Fall - Winter, 2008): 31-40;
Jennifer Wingate, “Real Art, War Art and the Politics of Peace Memorials in the United States after
World War I,” Public Art Dialogue vol. 2, no. 2 (September 2012): 162-189; Jennifer Wingate, “Over
the Top: The Doughboy in World War I Memorials and Visual Culture,” American Art vol. 19, no. 2
(Summer 2005): 26-47.
34
Andrew M. Shanken, “Planning Memory: Living Memorials in the United States During World War
II,” The Art Bulletin Vol. 84, No. 1 (Mar. 2002); 130-147. Shanken asserts that living memorials
probably dated back to Reconstruction but were considered a new type of memorial after WWI. He
argues that living memorials did not become the preferred type of memorial until WWII.
21
Gavin’s American Women in World War One: They Also Served (2006), Dorothy and
Carl J. Schneider’s Into the Breach: American Women Overseas in World War I
(1991), and Jean Ebbert and Marie-Beth Hall’s The First, The Few, The Forgotten:
Navy and Marine Corps Women in World War I. 35 Susan Zeiger’s In Uncle Sam’s
Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary Force, 1917-1919
provided particular assistance in writing this dissertation through her careful research
and her analysis of American women’s overseas labor; her conclusion briefly touches
on women’s postwar activities, especially with the WOSL. 36 My work uses her
conclusion as a jumping-off point and continues this story in much more depth.
Likewise, Elizabeth Cafer du Plessis’s book chapter on Alice Moore French examines
the American War Mothers and provides a sound history of the group, but does not
analyze the commemorative implications of their work, leaving room for my study of
that organization. 37 Beth Linker’s War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I
America presented a rich and useful analysis of the postwar rehabilitation work done
35
Kimberly Jensen, Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (Urbana, Illinois:
University of Illinois Press, 2008); Lettie Gavin, American Women in World War One: They Also
Served (Niwot, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2006); Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider, Into the
Breach: American Women Overseas in World War I (New York: Viking Adult, 1991); Anne Wiltsher,
Most Dangerous Women : Feminist Peace Campaigners of the Great War (Boston: Pandora, 1985);
Jean Ebbert and Marie-Beth Hall, The Fist, the Few, the Forgotten; Susan H. Godson, Serving
Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001).
36
Susan Zeiger, In Uncle Sam’s Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary Force,
1917-1919 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999); Margaret Randolph Higonnet, Jane
Jenson, Sonya Michel, and Margaret Collins Weitz, eds., Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World
Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987). The WOSL is mentioned briefly and
tangentially in: Kirsten Marie Delegard, Battling Miss Bolsheviki: The Origins of Female
Conservatism in the United States (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
37
Elizabeth Cafer du Plessis, “Alice French, Indiana War Mothers: From World War I “Kitchen
Soldiers” to Postwar Immigrant Reformers,” in Feminist Frontiers: Women Who Shaped the Midwest,
ed. by Yvonne J. Johnson (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2010); 99-118.
22
in part by American women, many of whom participated in veteranistcommemorations. 38
The rich scholarship on women’s involvement with Progressive era politics,
reform work, professional fields, volunteer activities, social welfare, and the suffrage
movement forms another important foundation for this study. Female veteranistcommemorators emerged from the Progressive era. They transferred their pre-war
experiences with reform work, politics, policy, and suffrage to their wartime service
and postwar commemorative activities. Indeed, the suffragist and political activist
Molly Dewson and her partner Polly Porter served with the Red Cross in France
during the war. 39 Community service and volunteerism constituted an important part
of Progressive women’s activities, especially through female organizations and
settlement houses. By expanding the story of what Progressive women did after the
First World War, my research adds to and complements Kathryn Kish Sklar’s “Hull
House: A Community of Women Reformers” and Robyn Muncy’s Creating a Female
Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935, to name just two works that I build
upon. 40 Studies of republican motherhood and the history of American motherhood
38
Linker, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America.
Dorothy and Carl Schneider, 59-62; Susan Ware, Partner and I: Molly Dewson, Feminism, and New
Deal Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 73-85.
40
For more about women involved with variants of the suffrage movement, social reform, and
Progressivism, see: Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the
Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Elizabeth Israels Perry,
Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Ware, Partner and I: Molly Dewson, Feminism, and New Deal
Politics; Noralee Frankel and Nancy S. Dye, eds., Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive
Era (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1991); Cott, The Grounding of Modern
Feminism; Kathryn Kish Sklar, “Hull House: A Community of Women Reformers,” Signs, Vol. 10,
No. 4 (Summer 1985); 658-677; Linda Gordon, “Social Insurance and Public Assistance: The
Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States, 1890-1935,” American Historical
Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (February 1992); 19-54; Maureen A. Flanagan, Seeing with their Hearts:
39
23
have also informed my analysis of the American War Mothers and the Gold Star
Mothers. These studies enabled me to argue, as female veteranist-commemorators did
themselves, that motherhood constituted a wartime service and sacrifice. 41
Many female veteranist-commemorators had been actively involved in various
women’s clubs, female organizations, and volunteer groups around the turn of the
century. They used their experiences and skills with these groups during their
wartime service and postwar memorialization work. Their involvement in postwar
commemorative organizations and activities was the natural extension of their prewar experiences. My work builds off of studies of women’s organizations in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Anne Fior Scott’s Natural Allies:
Women’s Associations in American History, and Karen J. Blair’s The Clubwoman as
Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 and The Torchbearers: Women
and their Amateur Arts Associations in America, 1890-1930. 42 Many organizations of
female veteranist-commemorators can be classified as patriotic associations, war
Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2002).
41
Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890-1930 (Urbana, IL:
University of Illinois Press, 1994); Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the
History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (New York: The Free Press, 1994); Linda K. Kerber, Women of the
Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1980); Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of the
Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992); Seth
Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of
Welfare States (New York: Routledge,1993); S.J. Kleinberg, Widows and Orphans First: The Family
Economy and Social Welfare Policy, 1880-1939 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Sonya
Michel, Children’s Interests/Mothers’ Rights: The Shaping of America’s Child Care Policy (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).
42
Karen J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (New York:
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1980); Anne Fior Scott, Natural Allies: Women’s Associations in
American History (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991); Karen J. Blair, The Torchbearers:
Women and their Amateur Arts Associations in America, 1890-1930 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1994); Karen J. Blair, Joining In: Exploring the History of Voluntary Organizations
(Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company, 2006).
24
organizations, or hereditary societies, according to Blair’s typology of American
voluntary organizations. 43 I also further explore Christopher Capozzola’s assertion
that during the years surrounding World War One, voluntary organizations played an
important part in American life and often defined Americans’ citizenship obligations
and relationships to the state. 44 The work conducted by female veteranistcommemorators, especially their support of needy veterans who they provided with
their own forms of social welfare, testifies to the accuracy of Capozzola’s thesis. My
work reveals another way that Americans fulfilled their citizenship obligations
through extra-governmental organizations.
My investigation of how female veteranist-commemorators argued for their
right to be recognized as war veterans and pushed for veterans’ benefits during the
interwar period allows me to make a gendered intervention into the scholarship on
veteran politics. Previously, much of this field has focused on male veterans and their
struggles to procure benefits and aid. My work argues that women, especially women
who considered themselves female veterans, also participated in veteran politics and
shaped the debates about the privileges earned by American veterans. Stephen R.
Ortiz’s Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New
Deal Era helped me contextualize the role of female veteranist-commemorators in
interwar veteran politics, enabling me me to better understand their political stances
and choices. 45 My work aims to include women veterans in the overall trajectory of
43
Blair, Joining In: Exploring the History of Voluntary Organizations, 52-55
Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern
American Citizen (New York; Oxford University Press, 2008).
45
Stephen R. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal
Era (New York: New York University Press, 2010); Julia Eichenberg and John Paul Newman, eds.,
44
25
the history of veteran politics in the U.S., and to specifically add them to the analysis
of the contentious struggle for veterans’ benefits before, during, and immediately
after the New Deal.
Several other fields also influenced my work. The literature on the role of the
U.S. in the First World War forms a historiographical base for my project. My work
diversifies and expands this scholarship, most notably, Jennifer Keene’s Doughboys,
the Great War, and the Remaking of America. 46 I also draw from recent studies of the
American Red Cross, particularly Marian Moser Jones’ The American Red Cross
from Clara Barton to the New Deal and Julia Irwin’s Making the World Safe: The
American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening. 47 My analysis of the
political meaning of the film Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), and its support of female
veteranist-commemorations, follows the lead of Saverio Giovacchini and other film
historians who argue that 1930s Hollywood films conveyed serious political
messages. 48 My work also follows Michael Sherry’s In the Shadow of War: The
The Great War and Veterans’ Internationalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Kelly,
Creating a National Home: Building the Veterans’ Welfare State, 1860-1900.
46
Jennifer D. Keene, Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2001); John S. D. Eisenhower with Joanne Thompson Eisenhower, Yanks:
The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I (New York: Touchstone, 2001); Bryan Farwell,
Over There: The United States in the Great War, 1917-1918 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
1999); David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980); Nancy K. Bristow, Making Men Moral: Social Engineering during the
Great War (New York: New York University Press, 1996); Linker, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in
World War I America; Ronald Schaffer, America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
47
Julia F. Irwin, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian
Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Marian Moser Jones, The American Red
Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
2013).
48
Saverio Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics on the Age of the New Deal
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001); Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Social History
of American Movies (New York: Random House, 1975); Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood
and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000); Andrew
Bergman, We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films (New York: New York University
Press, 1971).
26
United States Since the 1930s. Sherry examined the creation of a militarized
American society in the twentieth century. 49 I continue his work by showing how in
the 1920s and 1930s, civilian female veteranist-commemorators were deeply involved
in military memory and the politics of national defense.
My theoretical perspective relies heavily on Pierre Nora’s idea of lieux de
mémoire, Maurice Halbwachs’ concept of collective memory, and Benedict
Anderson’s exploration of imagined communities. 50 Nora explained memory as
occurring in lieux de mémoire, sites or places of memory, asserting that “memory
takes root in the concrete, in spaces, gestures, images, and objects.” 51 The importance
that Nora placed on lieux de mémoire justifies my focus on sites of memory such as
memorials, landscapes, cemeteries, and buildings as key ways to understand
commemoration. Nora also argued that memory is selective, and that it “only
accommodates those facts that suit it.” 52 I take this selectivity of memory into
account, especially when I explore the partial and temporary place accorded to
women in the commemorative narrative of World War One.
My examination of female veteranist-commemorators and the organizations
they formed to collectively memorialize their wartime experiences has been
influenced by Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory. Halbwachs posited
49
Michael G. Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s (New Haven,
Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1995).
50
Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations 26 (Spring
1999): 7-24; Pierre Nora, ed. Rethinking France: Les Lieux de Mémoire, Volume 1-3, Translated by
David P. Jordan. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009); Maurice Halbwachs, On
Collective Memory, Trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992);
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
(New York: Verso, 1991).
51
Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” 7-24; 9.
52
Ibid, 8.
27
that individuals recall memories in relation to the memories of other people and
jointly as part of a group. His argument that “the memory of a society extends as far
as the memory of the groups composing it,” directly supports my assertion that the
memory of women’s World War One service, and women’s intensive
commemoration of that conflict, survived through female veteranist-commemorators
and faded after their deaths. 53 Benedict Anderson’s definition of the nation as an
imagined political community, and the importance of military memory—particularly
the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier—to nationalism, influenced my analysis of how
female veteranist-commemorators defined their nationalism in relation to each other.
Anderson also shaped the conclusions I draw about the larger impact of female
veteranist-commemorations. 54
Commemorative service was not a new invention after World War One. It had
been pursued in various iterations for decades, especially after the Civil War, and it
accelerated in popularity during the World War One era. The Progressive era’s focus
on community development and improvement probably led to an increasing desire to
help the community while memorializing a person or event. At the turn of the
century, living memorial buildings dedicated for use by a particular community began
to come into vogue. Brevet Major General George Washington Cullum left a bequest
in his will to construct a hall at his alma mater, West Point, for the use of the officers
and graduates of the United States Military Academy there. Opened in 1900 and
designed by Stanford White, it contained numerous commemorative plaques and
53
54
Halbwachs, 144.
Anderson, 9-10.
28
memorialized Cullum while also serving the West Point community, as it continues to
do today. 55 In 1917, the American Red Cross opened the Memorial to the Heroic
Women of the Civil War in Washington D.C., a living memorial building constructed
to house their headquarters. These buildings and others set a precedent for future
living memorial buildings dedicated to ongoing service missions.
Women’s veteranist-commemorations began even before the end of the war. After
the widely publicized execution of British nurse Edith Cavell by the Germans on
October 12, 1915, a group of men and women who held a memorial service for her in
Boston decided to take further action to honor her. 56 They raised money to send an
“Edith Cavell Nurse From Massachusetts” to serve with the British as a nurse in
France in honor of Cavell’s memory. They selected Miss Alice. L. F. Fitzgerald for
the position. In 1916, Fitzgerald went to France wearing a specially created medal
that identified her as the “Edith Cavell Memorial Nurse.” Excerpts from her letters
were published in the U.S. to gain funds to keep her overseas. Through Miss
Fitzgerald’s work as a nurse, she and this committee exemplified the ideals of
veteranist-commemorations even before the war’s conclusion. Rather than building a
statue, they channeled their desire to memorialize Cavell into a project that helped
others just as Cavell did before her death. This choice foreshadowed similar choices
55
The United States Military Academy, “Cullum Hall History,” United States Military Academy: West
Point, n.d. <http://www.usma.edu/dca/SitePages/Cullum%20Hall%20History.aspx> (30 December
2014).
56
Alice Louise Florence Fitzgerald, The Edith Cavell Nurse From Massachusetts (Boston: W.A.
Butterfield, 1917) <https://archive.org/stream/edithcavellnurse00fitz#page/n7/mode/2up> (30
December 2014). Special thanks to Dr. Marian Moser Jones to alerting me of this source and
suggesting I use it in this project.
29
that would be made by female veteranist-commemorators and their allies after the
war.
Another American women, Anna Coleman Ladd, also performed veteranistcommemorations that aided disabled soldiers in France during the war. A professional
sculptor, Ladd established the American Red Cross Studio for Portrait-Masks in Paris
in 1917 to create copper masks for wounded soldiers with facial disfigurations
(figures 0.1 and 0.2). Awarded the French Legion of Honor for her work, as an early
veteranist-commemorator, Ladd used her talents as a sculptor to help wounded
soldiers, rather than pursuing purely artistic projects which would not help those
affected by the war. She transferred her skills as a crafter of memorials and sculptures
to the mission of healing and recreating human bodies mutilated by combat. She
explained that her object in her mask work “was not simply to provide a man a mask
to hide his awful mutilation, but to put in that mask part of the man himself—that is,
the man he had been before tragedy intervened.” 57 During the war, the human body
became Ladd’s medium. Her masks served as bodily memorials to the men she aided,
making these men living memorials to their own wartime services and sacrifices,
perhaps in the purest sense of the concept.
57
“How Wounded Soldiers Have Faced the World Again with “Portrait Masks”” St Louis PostDispatch Sunday Magazine, March 26, 1933 (supplement to the newspapers), Folder: American Red
Cross Studio for Portrait-Masks File, Scrapbook, 1914-1923 (Folder 2 of 7) Folder 4 of 11, 1914-1925,
B2.68, Box 2 of 7 Letters (1920-1937), Anna Coleman Ladd Papers, CA. 1881-1950, Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The author conducted extensive research in this collection.
30
Figure 0.1: Before and after images of a wounded soldier wearing one of Anna
Coleman Ladd’s masks. American Red Cross photographer. Anna Coleman Ladd
Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Figure 0.2: Some of Anna Coleman Ladd’s masks for disfigured soldiers shown
displayed in her Paris studio. Note how they resembled sculptural memorials Ca
1918/American Red Cross, photographer. Anna Coleman Ladd Papers, Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
31
After the war, Ladd returned to her work as an artist and designed several
memorials to the First World War which, given her intimate experiences with the
conflict’s destruction of the human body, depicted the war’s horrors. 58 Her pre-war
sculptural work had already portrayed war in a negative light. Her overseas
experiences further inspired her to represent the ugly realities of war and pacifist
sentiments in her war memorials. 59As a member of the Boston WOSL Unit, Ladd
continued to pursue veteranist-commemorations at the same time that she created
traditional statuary memorials. She even designed a medallion for the WOSL that
they presented to Marshal Foch (figure 0.3). 60 Although some of Ladd’s sculptural
memorials survive today, her intangible work as a veteranist-commemorator, and the
living memorials embodied in the reconfigured faces of the soldiers she helped,
survived only as long as Ladd and those men lived.
58
Ibid. Wingate, Sculpting Doughboy, 119, 163-167, 180; Jean Fitzgerald, revised by Jayna Josefson,
“A Finding Aid to the Anna Coleman Ladd Papers, 1881-1950, in the Archives of American Art,” July
20, 2012 < http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/anna-coleman-ladd-papers-10600/more#section_10> (30
December 2014).
During the war, others pursued similar work with facial wounds, facial masks and soldiers with
disfigured faces, such as Harold Gillies and Francis Derwent Wood in Great Britain. See: Suzannah
Biernoff, “The Rhetoric of Disfigurement in First World War Britain,” Social History of Medicine,
2011, published online, 27 Feb 2011 <
http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/02/27/shm.hkq095.short> (11 February 2015);
Suzannah Biernoff, “Flesh Poems: Henry Tonks and the Art of Surgery,” Visual Culture in Britain,
Vol. 11, Issue 1 (March 2010); 25-47; Suzannah Biernoff and Jane Tynan, “Making and Remaking the
Civilian Soldier: The First World War Photographs of Horace Nicholls,” Journal of War and Culture
Studies, Special Issue: Men at War, 5.3 (Sep. 2012); 277-295; Suzannah Biernoff, “The Face of War,”
in Ugliness: The Non-Beautiful in Art and Theory, eds. Andrei Pop and Mechtild Widrich (New York:
I.B. Tauris, 2014).
59
Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys, 163-167,180.
60
Carry On, pg. 4, Jan. 1922, Vol. I, No. 1, Folder: 1922, Box: 1922-1932, Women’s Overseas Service
League (WOSL) Carry On Periodical Collection, Gift of Carolyn Habgood, Women’s Memorial
Foundation Collection.
32
Figure 0.3: Women’s Overseas Service League plaster medallion/unidentified
photographer. A caption on the back of this image notes that League presented this
medallion to Marshal Foch. Anna Coleman Ladd Papers, Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution.
This dissertation uses a diverse range of sources to construct an interdisciplinary
cultural history of female veteranist-commemorations between and during the two
World Wars. It relies heavily on the papers associated with the organizations of
female veteranist-commemorators, especially their magazines, convention and
meeting minutes, and other official files. It uses textual sources such as newspapers,
correspondence, memoirs, speeches, scrapbooks, minute books, official government
and military records, and other written sources. The built environment also forms a
significant part of this project, so architecture, memorials, monuments, buildings,
cemeteries, images, art, and other aspects of the broader cultural landscape operate as
evidence. Textiles, artifacts, public history, and museum exhibits form another
source, as do films, music, dance, and oral histories. By using eclectic sources, I have
33
attempted to gauge the impact of women’s commemorative activities on multiple
levels of American culture and society.
The chapters that follow are organized thematically. They demonstrate the myriad
ways that female veteranist-commemorators influenced the interwar discourse and
debate on the legacy of the First World War. Chapter one focuses on the Women’s
Overseas Service League (WOSL), an organization composed of women who served
overseas during the war as unpaid volunteers, official members of the military, wage
workers, trained professionals, or in any other capacity. It argues that because of their
unique wartime experiences, these women, who considered themselves veterans,
preferred veteranist-commemorations to traditional statuary memorials, which they
often rejected. Chapter two analyzes the Memorial Building to the Women of the
World War, a living memorial building constructed by the American Red Cross to
honor women’s services and sacrifices in World War One. Intended to house ARC
service activities as it commemorated women, this building represented an attempted
compromise between traditional statuary commemoration and veteranistcommemorations that some women viewed as a failure.
Chapter three investigates the American War Mothers (AWM), an organization of
mothers of World War One service members. These women believed their status as
war mothers constituted a national service, and they pursued veteranistcommemorations to continue their national duties. Chapter four turns to the Gold Star
Mothers and Widows Pilgrimages of 1930 to 1933, a government sponsored program
that sent the mothers and widows of deceased service members to visit their loved
one’s overseas grave. This chapter reframes the pilgrimages as a form of veteranist34
commemorations performed by the government for the Gold Star women at their own
behest. These women believed that such a trip was the most appropriate way to honor
their sacrifices and their deceased relatives.
Chapter five focuses on a collection of women’s wartime uniforms gathered by
the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America and exhibited at the
Smithsonian’s National Museum in the 1920s. This exhibit was a utilitarian memorial
to women’s wartime service built through philanthropic acts. The sixth and final
chapter places women’s veteranist-commemorations within the political and social
context of the interwar period, and the 1930s in particular. Using the film Gold
Diggers of 1933, it reveals how female veteranist-commemorators influenced
American culture so deeply that their ideas were portrayed on screen through this
film’s finale, “Remember My Forgotten Man.”
By drawing upon eclectic examples of women’s interwar veteranistcommemorations, I demonstrate these women’s far-reaching impact on American
culture and society. Irrevocably changed by their wartime experiences, female
veteranist-commemorators actively sought to promote a form of memorialization that
honored their wartime services and helped to heal the wounds of war. Although
female veteranist-commemorators often left little permanent physical evidence of
their work, their importance cannot be underestimated, and their lasting legacy must
be understood, for they re-conceptualized American commemorative practices.
35
Chapter 1: Banding Together: The Women’s Overseas
Service League and Veteranist-Commemorations
Re-Dedication:
As only those
Who dared War’s horrors:
Who felt War’s pain;
Who shared War’s terrors;
Who saw War’s slain:
Who bear War’s scars
Of flesh and brain,
Can know War’s awful Truth
And wholly realize
The noble sacrifice
Of those who gave their lives to Glory,-Who with them, hour by hour,
Guarded the Faith which gave them power
Gladly to die,
Can surely see and humbly feel
The sacred trust their deaths reveal.
Then,
While today
We celebrate
The victory to them denied,
Let us, our lives, re-dedicate
To keep alive the Faith which led
Those glorious Legions of the Dead. 61
M’ Edna Corbet, A.R.C. Searcher, Meuse-Argonne Offensive,
Kansas City Unit, WOSL, Carry On, November 1926.
In her poem, “Re-Dedication,” published on the front cover of the November 1926
issue of Carry On, the national magazine of the Women’s Overseas Service League
61
Carry On, Vol. V, No. 4, November, 1926, front cover, Folder: 1926, Box 1922-1932, Women’s
Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On Periodical Collection, Gift of Carolyn Habgood,
Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
36
(WOSL), M’ Edna Corbett explained the postwar commemorative mission of the
American women who served overseas during the First World War (figure 1.1).
When these women returned to the United States, they realized that their wartime
experiences had changed their ideas about military commemoration. As the title of
Corbett’s poem indicated, rather than just building war memorials, they re-dedicated
their lives to service projects in memory of the war dead.
Figure 1.1: The poem “Re-dedication” featured on the front cover of Carry On, Vol.
V, No. 4, November, 1926. Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On
The members of the Women’s Overseas Service League embraced veteranistcommemorations and believed that they could best memorialize the First World War
through service to the living, especially male and female veterans. They defined
37
community service as an alternative form of commemoration. They chose to honor
the past by positively influencing the present and the future, rather than glorifying
war by constructing monuments. Their agenda of veteranist-commemorations focused
on service to former overseas women, service to male veterans, and advocacy for
former overseas women’s rights and inclusion in the war’s national historical
narrative. Their support of female veterans was especially important since many were
ineligible for government benefits, inspiring the WOSL to institute their own forms of
social welfare to aid them.
By continuing their national service, WOSL members reminded the nation that
they too had served in the war and gone above and beyond the duties of citizenship,
even before many could vote. The group staked a claim for women in the interwar
commemorative culture and tried to include the memory of women’s overseas service
in the war’s history. After all women gained the franchise in 1920, the organization
created space for women to support the armed forces despite restrictions on their
participation in the military. In the process, the WOSL helped redefine
commemoration to include service, advocacy, and social welfare, and demonstrated
that a memorial could be formed from human acts just as it could be carved from
stone.
A Brief History of the Women’s Overseas Service League
The Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) constituted one of the most
important women’s First World War organizations in the United States. It continued
38
the bonds of sisterhood among overseas women and provided them with a way to
serve the nation through community service, commemoration, advocacy, and patriotic
work. 62 The WOSL evolved from local groups of overseas women that formed upon
their return to the U.S. Mrs. Oswald (Ada Knowlton) Chew, who served overseas
from 1916 to 1919, decided to unite these groups into a national organization. She
helped plan the first national convention in Philadelphia in May 1921 that officially
organized the national Women’s Overseas Service League. 63According to the group’s
1925 Articles of Incorporation, membership was open to any American woman or
any foreign woman who lived in America but served overseas “for the success of the
Allied Cause during any part of the World War between August the first, nineteen
hundred and fourteen, and January the first, nineteen hundred and twenty.” 64 To
organize a national league, the WOSL arranged its self-governing local units into nine
Corps Areas that corresponded to the War Department’s Army Corps Areas. 65 A
national board of officers and committees planned the annual national conventions,
published the magazine Carry On, and coordinated other national matters.
62
“Incorporation of Women’s Overseas Service League Hearing Before the Committee on the
Judiciary House of Representatives Sixty-Seventh Congress Second Session on H.R. 7299 Serial 23
January 12, 1922” pg. 3, Folder: Articles of Incorporation 1922-29, Box: WOSL Records: National
Articles of Incorporation, By-laws, Manuals, Minutes, Finances, Rules of Procedure, 80.19.19 +etc.
Box1, National WWI Museum; Helene M. Sillia, Lest We Forget: A History of the Women’s Overseas
Service League (1978), 5. Sillia was a WOSL member and the National Historian and wrote this
history for the WOSL who published it in 1978. Thus far, the WOSL has only been found in one
secondary source; Susan Zeiger discusses the WOSL’s postwar advocacy for women veterans briefly
in her final chapter. Zeiger, In Uncle Sam’s Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary
Force, 1917-1919.
63
Sillia, 5, 72, 217.
64
“Incorporation of Women’s Overseas Service League Hearing…” pg. 4.
65
“Articles of Incorporation of the Women’s Overseas Service League: By-laws of the Women’s
Overseas Service League,” pg. 6-7, Folder: Articles of Incorporation 1922-29, Box: WOSL Records:
National Articles of Incorporation, By-laws, Manuals, Minutes, Finances, Rules of Procedure,
80.19.19 +etc. Box 1, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI Museum
39
The WOSL intended to become more than just a friendly social association of
former overseas women: they focused on serving others. The Articles of
Incorporation stated that:
the object of this association is to keep alive and develop the spirit that
prompted overseas service, to maintain the ties of comradeship born of that
service and to assist and further any patriotic work; to inculcate a sense of
individual obligation to the community, state and nation; to work for the
welfare of the Army and Navy; to assist, in any way in their power, the men
and women who served or were wounded or incapacitated in the World War;
to foster friendship and understanding between Americans and Allies in the
World War. 66
The WOSL united its members to serve local communities, states, and the nation in
these ways. Although they appreciated the work done by women on the home front,
by going overseas they experienced unique hardships that created what Mrs. Chew
described as a “feeling of sistership among those who went over there.” 67 They used
this sisterhood and the unique legacy of their wartime experiences to continue their
service in the postwar era. As much as they could, the WOSL tried to be apolitical
and concentrate on service, although it was not always possible. In 1923, National
President Louise Wells explained how she hoped that “men may say of us, not, ‘They
support this or that’; not ‘They oppose this or that’; not ‘They want this or that’; but
‘They serve.’” 68
The WOSL saw themselves as a sister organization to the American Legion,
with whom they were closely aligned and often cooperated. In 1923, the American
Legion National Commander Alvin Owsley even described the WOSL as the
66
“Articles of Incorporation,” pg. 4. Although the WOSL failed to get a Congressional Charter to
nationally incorporate the organization, they were incorporated in the State of Indiana in 1924 and
granted a charter from that state in 1926. Sillia, 5
67
Hearing, 8. 13-14
68
Sillia, ii.
40
American Legion’s “comrades in service” (figure 1.2). 69 Although the women who
officially served in the military could join the American Legion or Veterans of
Foreign Wars, many overseas women served with civilian organizations and were
ineligible for membership in these groups because they did not officially serve in the
military. 70 The creation of the WOSL allowed these women to gain representation
and inclusion in a veteran’s organization similar to the American Legion. Mrs. Chew
even admitted that they intended to create an organization based on the same
principles as the Legion, and the Legion endorsed the WOSL’s bill that sought a
national charter, but failed to succeed. 71
Figure 1.2: The WOSL joined with the American Legion during a Memorial Day
ceremony at Suresnes American Cemetery outside of Paris during the WOSL’s 1930
National Convention in Paris. Carry On August 1930 Vol. IX No.3, pg. 36. Women’s
Memorial Foundation, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On
Periodical Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial Foundation.
69
Sillia, 5. Alvin Owsley, “Comrades in Service—A Message From the American Legion,” Carry On,
May 1923, Vol. II, No. 2, pg. 1, 6, 24. MS 22 Box 36, The Women’s Overseas Service League
Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.
70
“Incorporation of Women’s Overseas Service League Hearing…” pg. 6.
71
Ibid, 5-6.
41
As highly trained and experienced women, WOSL members wanted to
continue using their skills to serve the nation after the war. Mrs. Chew envisioned the
League as serving the U.S. Government “in case of future wars, catastrophes, or need
of any kind, to have a body of women trained in the Great War, in service of every
kind; organized and ready for action so that they can be called upon at a moment’s
notice…in other words, it is a reserve army for the United States government.” 72
Having served overseas, these women did not want to fully retreat back to the
traditional female domestic sphere; they wanted to use their distinctly female skills in
the public sphere. As Louise Wells explained in 1922 during her tenure as National
Service Chairman, when the overseas women came home, “something said to us—I
suppose it is the maternal instinct in every good woman which said that the women
had served well over there, and that we had no families, no children, and we wanted
to continue to serve. We came back wanting to work, wanting to carry on.” 73
Although the WOSL embraced the often feminine nature of their work, newly armed
with the vote and fresh from their wartime experiences, they yearned to continue their
national service and to exercise the full rights of citizenship. Through the League,
they created space for women to engage in national defense and pushed for expanded
opportunities to become civic leaders.
Serving and advocating for male and female veterans became the WOSL’s
most important mission and soon overtook their initial intentions to also serve as a
“reserve army.” Mrs. Chew described WOSL women as wanting “to go on with the
72
73
Ibid, 3.
Ibid.
42
service that we have started. These women, who gave their services willingly during
the World War, now wish to continue their services to humanity and their country.” 74
She explained how, in particular, WOSL members wished “to help and are already
helping the soldier and sailor injured during the World War and those of their own
ranks who are suffering or in need.” 75
The WOSL embodied their focus on service in the title of their organizational
magazine: Carry On, a phrase that became a sort of unofficial WOSL motto. An
advertisement for the Red Cross featured on the back cover of the August 1925
edition of Carry On epitomized this maxim. A photograph titled “The Greatest
Mother Still “Carries On,” showed two female nurses assisting two severely disabled
veterans, one in a wheelchair and the other, a double amputee, resting on a wheeled
board (figure 1.3). The image is captioned: “In the Homes, in the Government
Hospitals, and the Veterans Bureau Offices it is Serving Those Who Served.” This
image plays on the Red Cross’s wartime nickname as the “World’s Greatest Mother,”
a phrase commonly featured in wartime propaganda posters, as well as the WOSL
magazine’s title, to demonstrate the overlapping missions of the ARC and the WOSL,
which included many former and present ARC members.
74
75
Ibid, 5.
Ibid.
43
Figure 1.3: Back cover of Carry On, Vol. IV, August 1925, No. 3. Carry On
The WOSL placed special importance on serving and commemorating women
veterans like themselves. 76 They advocated for overseas women to receive
government benefits that many were denied because they lacked official veteran
status. The League often memorialized the women who died overseas and
commemorated women’s wartime service alongside men’s to try to prevent their
wartime contributions from being forgotten. Louise Wells described how the WOSL
women “took overseas with us a torch we lighted in our own hearts, and it was our
purpose to keep that burning, which we did, and when we came back we wanted to
76
Ibid. Mrs. Chew emphasized that the WOSL had a duty “to assist its own members and obtain
recognition and memorials for the overseas women who died or were killed in service.”
44
preserve that spirit.” 77 This idea of a torch of service appeared in the League’s
emblem, which featured a lit torch spreading its light, symbolizing how the WOSL
spread the light of its service through their postwar activities (figure 1.4). Wells
worried that “if that spirit…is to be allowed to die out without some permanent form
of record, without something which can be handed down to our successors, I think
that the country will have lost a very precious thing.” 78 She believed that the history
of American women’s overseas service needed to be preserved in the historical record
so future generations would know how women served their country even before they
could all vote or officially enter every branch of the military. Recording this history,
she noted, might help future generations of women gain more opportunities to serve
in the military.
Figure 1.4: WOSL emblem from the cover of Carry On. Carry On Periodical
77
78
Ibid, 15.
Ibid, 16.
45
Over 16,000 American women are estimated to have served overseas during
World War One. 79 This provided a large population of women from which the WOSL
recruited members. Members of the League represented over one hundred of the
different organizations with which women served overseas. The annual WOSL
rosters published as supplements to Carry On usually contained an entire page
dedicated to a list of these organizations. 80 These rosters even included some foreign
organizations such as Great Britain’s Queen Alexandria’s Military Nursing Service
and the French Red Cross. Some WOSL members were American women who
served abroad with foreign groups, often before the U.S. entered the war, and other
members were Europeans who moved to the U.S. after the war.
The League’s broad membership captured the diverse ways that American
women served overseas during the conflict, and WOSL members took pride in
uniting women across regional, economic, social, and religious differences. 81 By
1925, 2,086 women had joined the WOSL and its members constantly worked to
increase their membership rosters. 82 Members recognized and appreciated the
League’s attempted inclusivity. Miss Blanton, a member from Richmond, Virginia,
79
Zeiger, 2; Sillia, 1; Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider, 287-289. Estimates of how many American
women served overseas in WWI vary widely. Zeiger estimated there were at least 16,000 while Sillia
estimated about 90,000. Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider argued that 25,000 seemed like a “realistic,
conservative figure.”
80
For example, the Roster from November 1940 listed 140 different organizations. These included the
American Committee for Devastated France, the American Library Association, the Army Nurse
Corps, the American Red Cross, the Harvard Surgical Unit, the Jewish Welfare Board, the Knights of
Columbus, the Navy Nurse Corps, the Salvation Army, the Signal Corps, the U.S. Navy, the YMCA,
and the YWCA just to name a few.
Women’s Memorial Foundation, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On periodical
Collection; Box: Carry On 1940-1947l Folder 1940; “Roster: Supplement to Carry On”, Vol. XIX,
Nov. 1940, No.4, Pg. 3.
81
Incorporation of Women’s Overseas Service League Hearing…” 6
82
Sillia, 6.
46
explained how during the war, “those of us who were born and bred in a brier patch
have been broadened by having contact with other parts of the world and with women
from the West and from the North.” 83 She praised the way that the WOSL brought
these women together again after the war. For women like Blanton who were raised
in the shadow of the Civil War, the WOSL aided the ongoing process of national
reconciliation.
The League tried to keep dues affordable so that women of all social and
economic classes could join. 84 In contrast to the popular image of the women who
served overseas as mostly being from wealthy upper-class backgrounds, many of
these women actually came from lower-middle class backgrounds and worked as
wage earners before the war; the WOSL wanted to remain accessible to them. 85
Nonetheless, many members did come from similar white, middle and upper class
backgrounds. Perhaps their privileged upbringings enabled them to more easily
devote their time to the WOSL after the war, while working class women may have
had to return to jobs with less time to be involved with the WOSL.
Despite their intentions to be an inclusive organization, the WOSL racially
segregated its membership. The WOSL’s Articles of Incorporation specifically stated
that “colored women in each state shall form their own separate units.” 86 Zeiger
estimates that three African-American women served in France as YMCA secretaries
83
“Incorporation of Women’s Overseas Service League Hearing,” 19.
“Incorporation of Women’s Overseas Service League Hearing…” 6
85
For a detailed analysis of the economic, social, racial, and religious backgrounds of overseas women
workers in WWI see Zeiger, 26-50. She asserts that “despite the popular image of women at the front
as “heiresses” using their wealth and influence to aid the cause, the majority of women who served
with the AEF were in fact from the lower middle class,” 31.
86
“Articles of Incorporation 1922-29, By laws;” pg. 6 section 2.
84
47
during the war; several dozen other Black women joined them after April 1919. No
African-American nurses were permitted to serve overseas. Even though only a
handful of African-American women served overseas, this policy of segregation still
prevented African-American women from joining together equally alongside their
white colleagues. 87 In keeping with the customs of Jim Crow America, the WOSL,
like the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during the war, did not believe that
the service and sacrifices of African-Americans necessitated their equal treatment as
citizens in the postwar social order.
Many WOSL members volunteered for wartime service because of their
Progressive era involvement in volunteerism and reform work. 88 During the
Progressive era, women expanded their traditional roles by becoming leaders and
active participants in social work, settlement houses, and volunteer organizations such
as the American Red Cross and Salvation Army. At the same time, they pushed for
the professionalization of these fields and pursed careers as paid employees. When
the First World War began, many of these women transferred their leadership and
skills to organizations that supported the war effort. Afterwards, many of these
women joined the WOSL, connecting their Progressive era service work to their
postwar commemorative activities and careers. Two such women were Rose Glass
and Lena Hitchcock.
87
Zeiger, 27-28. See also Hunton and Johnson, Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary
Forces.
88
For examples of women’s service, reform, and welfare activities at the turn of the century see:
Kathryn Kish Sklar, “Hull House: A Community of Women Reformers;” Linda Gordon, “Social
Insurance and Public Assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States,
1890-1935;” Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935.
48
Rose Glass organized the Seattle WOSL Unit and served as its Charter
President. Highly educated like many other women active in the Progressive
movement, she graduated from the University of Washington in 1904 and attended
graduate school at Columbia University. She then worked in a New York City
Settlement House before she volunteered with the YMCA as the entertainment
director for the AEF in France. 89 After the war, Glass settled in Seattle where she
worked as a teacher for forty years. She never married, and was supported in her old
age by a trust fund established for her by a relative, evidence of her privileged
background. 90 Influenced by Progressivism, Glass took her leadership roles seriously
and devoted her life to her work as an educator and to supporting the Seattle WOSL
Unit (figures 1.5 and 1.6).
89
The Seattle Times 10 April 1970, A6, Folder: News clippings and Information WOSL Seattle Unit,
Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City,
Missouri.
90
Ibid.
49
Figure 1.5: WOSL Seattle Unit. Women’s Overseas Service League Collection,
National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
Figure 1.6: WOSL Seattle Unit members on November 11, 1968. From left to right:
Mrs. Edna Lord (ARC), Mrs. I.M. (Anna) Palmaw (ANC), Miss Rose Glass
(YMCA), and Miss Blanche Wenner (YMCA). Women’s Overseas Service League
Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
50
Lena Hitchcock served as the WOSL National President from 1927 to 1929
and similarly devoted her life to her career and the advancement of women as civic
leaders. As mentioned in the introduction, Hitchcock came from a privileged family
involved with Republican politics, and she spent her youth as a volunteer and suffrage
activist in Washington D.C. During the war, she served in France with one of the first
groups of occupational therapist reconstruction aides attached to the Army Medical
Corps. 91 As a pioneer in this field, when she returned home, she worked as a private
occupational therapist in Washington D.C. before she helped establish the
occupational therapy department at the city’s Children’s Hospital, where she served
as the chairman from 1935 to 1952. She then helped lead the occupational therapy
program at the Society of Crippled Children until 1967, all while remaining an active
leader with the WOSL. 92 Hitchcock made helping others the focus of her career; she
explained in a 1982 oral history that volunteering had been important to her
throughout her life. 93 Women like Lena Hitchcock and Rose Glass, who came of age
during the Progressive era, drew from their early experiences with transforming their
volunteer service into their professional careers and understood veteranistcommemorations as complementary to their commitment to aiding others, acting as
community leaders, and establishing successful careers.
91
Sillia, 291-220.
“Anna Hitchcock, Former Therapist, Dies at Age 97,” The Washington Post (Washington D.C.) 4
Nov. 1986, pg. B4, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
93
Lena Hitchcock oral history (03), 14 July 1982, recorded by the WOSL, UC –MS022/7 Lena
Hitchcock: MS 22 Box 182, The Women’s Overseas Service League Records, University of Texas at
San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.
92
51
Service as Commemoration
The WOSL’s veteranist-commemoration activities encompassed a wide variety of
service projects and advocacy work. Service projects included any form of
community service, volunteer work, fundraising, or philanthropy. Advocacy work
included lobbying and advocating on behalf of male and female veterans, especially
former overseas women who tried to gain government benefits.
As Americans built monuments that honored the war such as the Liberty
Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, the Chateau-Thierry Monument in France, and
the many Doughboy statues across the U.S., the WOSL chose another course of
action by preferring veteranist-commemorations. 94According to WOSL
organizational historian Helene M. Sillia, the WOSL felt that “any memorial to our
women war-dead should be in this country rather than overseas and that it should take
the form of living service to our own.” 95 The WOSL repeated this mantra throughout
the interwar period to justify their abstention from more traditional memorial projects.
During the WOSL’s annual national radio broadcast in 1937, service chairman Mrs.
Nathaniel J. Steed reminded the WOSL of their motto: “the greatest memorial to the
dead is service to the living.” 96 On the front cover of the May 1923 edition of Carry
On, they reprinted Edgar Guest’s poem “Memorial Day,” which promoted veteranistcommemorations. It said that the living must “Pledge ourselves as warriors true/Unto
the work they died to do” and that:
94
See Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys.
Sillia, 7-8.
96
“Overseas Unit of D.C. Women Attends Party,” The Washington Post (Washington D.C.), Mar 1,
1937, pg. 12, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
95
52
The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead to-day
Is not of speech or roses red,
But living, throbbing hearts instead,
That shall renew the pledge they sealed
With death upon the battlefield… 97
The WOSL believed that by carrying on their service work after the war, they
properly commemorated the wartime contributions of American men and women and
helped to inscribe their experiences into the narrative of US participation in the World
War.
The WOSL remained committed to veteranist-commemorations even during
the Great Depression. In August 1933 issue of Carry On, National President Faustine
Dennis reminded the WOSL of the increased importance of their service work during
these trying times. 98 She told them they must “carry on our Service—this word that is
to us the very breath of our League Life!” 99 Referring to the recent action taken at the
convention to establish an emergency fund to help WOSL members in need of
temporary aid due to the Great Depression, she explained that: “I cannot adequately
express my happiness that through convention action another service to our women is
at last made possible—financial assistance to those who, although not physically
disabled, are no less in need of a helping hand over an economic crisis.” 100 The
WOSL stepped in when the government did not and provided welfare and support to
its needy members, no matter the cause. In doing so, they commemorated these
97
Edgar Guest, “Memorial Day,” Carry On, May 1923, Vol. II, No. 2, MS 22 Box 36, The Women’s
Overseas Service League Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.
98
Carry On, Vol. XI, Aug. 1933, No. 3, pg. 23, Folder: 1933, Box “1933-1939,” Carry On Periodical
99
Ibid.
100
Ibid, 12-13, 23.
53
women for their wartime service by providing them with assistance, as they did for
their nation during the war.
The WOSL would last as an organization only as long as its members lived;
eventually, the women who served in the First World War would die and the League
would not be able to pursue its missions.101 The life of the organization was only
extended when the U.S. entered World War Two and the WOSL decided to open
membership to the next generation of women who served overseas. By
commemorating World War One through acts of service, WOSL members physically
embodied the concept of a living memorial that existed only while they could carry
on their service work. In fact, some WOSL units became memorials themselves when
they chose a unit name that honored a local woman who died in wartime service or a
recently deceased member of their unit. 102
Despite their preference for veteranist-commemorations, the WOSL’s mission
did not prohibit or discourage traditional statuary memorials, but prioritized them
below the central mission of serving veterans. The WOSL incorporated a variety of
other commemorative activities and social events into their organization, many of
which were fairly standard activities for a veteran’s organization. 103 Local WOSL
units participated in parades, memorial services, funerals, and social activities in
addition to their service work. For example, on Memorial Day in 1925, members of
101
Incorporation of Women’s Overseas Service League Hearing,” 14.
Sillia, 7.
103
For example, on Armistice Day in 1924, the Toledo WOSL unit held a French dinner at a member’s
home that “was of a purely social nature, and was greatly enjoyed by all the members.” Minute Book,
Toledo Unit, c. 1920-1946, November 11, 1924 entry, Folder: W.O.S.L. Records Minute Book, Toledo
Unit c.1920-1946 84.150.2, Box: W.O.S.L. RECORDS, Minute Books of Toledo, Ohio Unit, 2 vols.,
84.150.2-.3, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas
City, Missouri.
102
54
the Toledo, Ohio, WOSL unit marched in the local parade with some members in
their old uniforms. Later that day, they attended the Memorial Day services at a
Presbyterian Church. 104 The WOSL also had their own “Order of Service,” a
document that outlined the program to be used at the WOSL memorial services held
at each annual national convention to honor the women who lost their lives overseas
during the war, as well as any recently deceased WOSL members. 105
In their early years, the WOSL considered supporting some memorial projects
that combined aspects of statuary memorials with service, such as the failed George
Washington and Victory Memorial Building and the 1930 Memorial Building to the
Women of the World War, discussed in chapter two. Begun in 1898 to memorialize
George Washington in the nation’s capital, the George Washington Memorial
Building faced a series of problems that prevented it from being completed. 106 In an
attempt to revive the project, the mission of commemorating the victory in the World
War was added and the project was reconceived as a victory building that would
contain themed memorial rooms. 107 The WOSL was asked to purchase one of these
rooms for use as its national headquarters and as a memorial to the women who died
104
Ibid, May 6, 1925 entry.
“Minutes of the Ninth Annual Convention, July 8-11, 1929 Minneapolis, Minnesota;” pg. 5, ;
Folder: Ann. Convention Agendas, 1930-61, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National
WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.; Pamphlet “Memorial Service of the Thirty-Sixth
National Convention Women’s Overseas Service League,” Unlabeled binder, Liberty Memorial
Association Minute Book Collection, National WWI Museum.
106
Letter, June 26, 1922 from Eben Putnam to Irene M. Givenwilson, Folder: Irene Givenwilson
Cornell, 1921-3 Re: Women who died in service George Washington Memorial, Box: WOSL:
Correspondence, 1924-62; Congressional bills, 1929-1951, Box 4, WOSL Collection, National WWI
Museum.
107
Letter from Mrs. Henry F. Dimock to Irene M. Givenwilson, May 22, 1922, Folder: Irene
Givenwilson Cornell, 1921-3 Re: Women who died in service George Washington Memorial, Box:
WOSL: Correspondence, 1924-62; Congressional bills, 1929-1951, Box 4, Women’s Overseas Service
League Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
105
55
during their overseas service. 108 The WOSL briefly considered this offer in 1922, but
asked the American Legion for their opinion first. The WOSL discovered that the
George Washington Memorial Building had been a source of nationwide controversy
and that the American Legion condemned the project. 109 The Legion explained to
Irene M. Givenwilson, chairman of the WOSL Memorial Committee and an
American Red Cross (ARC) leader, that they opposed the erection of any public
building commemorating the World War until “proper and adequate legislation has
been enacted for the relief of the disabled, first; the unemployed, second; and adjusted
compensation.” 110 The American Legion agreed with the WOSL’s prioritization of
service projects before the construction of monuments and encouraged the WOSL to
reject the offer, which they did. This turned out to be a wise choice since the building
was never completed and the project ended in embarrassment and disaster. 111
The decision not to participate in the George Washington Memorial Building
reflected the WOSL’s intensifying preference for veteranist-commemorations during
the 1920s. In her 1923 report about this decision, Givenwilson concluded that the
Memorial Committee believed that it was “far more important at the present time to
increase our membership than to decide upon a permanent memorial, since we have
108
Ibid.
Letter from Russell G. Creviston to Irene M. Givenwilson, June 23, 1922, Folder: Irene
Givenwilson Cornell, 1921-3 Re: Women who died in service George Washington Memorial, Box:
WOSL: Correspondence, 1924-62; Congressional bills, 1929-1951, Box 4, Women’s Overseas Service
League Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
110
Ibid.
111
Smithsonian Institution Archives, “SIA RU007474, George Washington Memorial Association,
Records, 1890-1922,” Smithsonian Institution Archives, n.d. (26 December 2014)
<http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_arc_217624>
109
56
enrolled to date only about 10% of the women who actually served overseas.” 112
Increasing the WOSL membership took precedence over permanent memorials
because the more women that became members, the more veterans the League could
assist. The WOSL continued to reject offers to participate in physical memorials, such
as in 1924 when they declined an invitation from a potential war mothers’ memorial
with the explanation that their “particular care at present being disabled women.” 113
Starting in the WOSL’s early years, leaders of the League corresponded with other
veterans’ organizations and rejected traditional memorial projects in favor of service
work, their preferred form of commemoration.
The WOSL’s focus on veteranist-commemorations became so widely known that
during their 1930 National Convention in Paris, the President of France, Gaston
Doumergue, addressed the WOSL National President Mrs. Taubles and several other
national officers at the Elysee Palace and praised the League for their well-known
service work. 114 As published in Carry On, President Doumergue noted how the
“women of your organization have done your share of service in time of war, but
now, when womanhood has come into her own, there is still as great a service to
render to the cause of peace, a constant service, that of bringing gradually continued
peace on earth.” 115 Doumergue understood that by pursuing veteranistcommemorations, the WOSL aimed to make the world a better, more peaceful place.
112
“Report of the Chairman of the Memorial Committee, June 1st, 1923,” National WWI Museum;
Box: WOSL: Correspondence, 1924-62; Congressional bills, 1929-1951, Box 4; Folder: Irene
Givenwilson Cornell, 1921-3 Re: Women who died in service George Washington Memorial.
113
Carry On, Aug. 1924, Vol. III, No. 3, pg. 5, MS 22, Box 36, The Women’s Overseas Service
League Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.
114
Carry On, Vol. IX, Aug. 1930, No. 3, pg. 42, Folder: 1930, Box: 1922-1932, Carry On Periodical
115
Ibid.
57
To conduct their agenda of veteranist-commemorations, the WOSL instituted
service programs at the national and local unit levels. Service at the national level
took place throughtwo national standing committees devoted to the causes most
valued by the league: the Service Committee and the Fund for Disabled Overseas
Women Committee. 116 The Service Committee worked on the issues of
“Rehabilitation; Hostess Service of the United States Army; Government and
Soldiers’ Homes; Loans and Grants from the Fund for Disabled Overseas Women;
and other service incidental to purposes of the League.” 117 The Fund for Overseas
Disabled Women Committee focused solely on running this national fund that aided
overseas women and constituted one of the WOSL’s most important ongoing
projects. 118
Following the lead of the national committees, local units devoted most of their
time and resources to service activities. Local units often focused their service work
on some of the main projects outlined by the national committees, such as raising
money for the Fund for Disabled Overseas Women, Army hostess work, volunteering
at veteran’s hospitals, and aiding other overseas women. No standard protocol existed
for the local units to follow; units were free to choose the causes they wanted to
support and service activities varied widely by unit. The activities of the local units
were often published toward the end of each issue of Carry On in a section entitled
“Unit Activities from Coast to Coast,” so that other units could be kept abreast of
their colleague’s activities.
116
“By-laws of the Women’s Overseas Service League,” 10-11.
Ibid, 11.
118
Ibid, 10.
117
58
At all levels of the organization, the WOSL focused on three main categories
of service that originated in the League’s mission: service to former overseas women,
service to male and female veterans, and advocacy that aided former overseas women
and helped to include them in the war’s historical narrative. With the onset of the
Great Depression, the growing power of veteran politics, and the aging of male and
female veterans, these categories of service became even more vital to the League and
its platform of veteranist-commemorations.
Helping Their Own: Service Towards Former Overseas Women
The men who served in the American armed forces successfully gained some
government veterans’ benefits such as the Bonus, vocational rehabilitation training,
and hospitalization benefits for those with service-related disabilities, while the
majority of former overseas women remained ineligible for veteran status and
government aid. 119 The WOSL did not leave these women to fend for themselves but
helped their own members and other former overseas women. They prioritized
service to these women, since they often had no other means of assistance. By aiding
former overseas women, the WOSL commemorated their service and showed their
appreciation for their sacrifices, even when the government did not.
Because so many overseas women served in voluntary organizations and not
in “official” government service, these women received no government benefits. An
undated document about the League’s history explained that although the women
who served overseas outside the official government apparatus “had shared the
119
For more information on the benefits World War veterans received see: Ortiz, 13-31.
59
hardships of the armed forces and many came home with impaired health, only the
Army and Navy nurses were entitled to government compensation. None of the
welfare organizations made any provision for their disabled workers after the war.
Even the Red Cross nurses who served in Army hospitals were not eligible for aid
from any source.” 120 Although these women had supported the American armed
forces, because they did not officially serve in the military, they were shut out of all
government veterans’ benefits. This became an extremely contentious issue that the
WOSL worked to overturn by spearheading several initiatives to provide their own
social welfare to former overseas women who lacked government benefits.
The WOSL established the Fund for Disabled Overseas Women to provide loans
and financial aid to any disabled, ill, or economically unstable former overseas
woman. This fund became especially important during the Great Depression since it
provided economic support to women who had nowhere else to turn. The fund had
been created through a resolution passed at the 1923 national convention; each
member was asked to contribute one dollar to the fund every year and WOSL units
raised additional money to establish and support the fund. 121 It was intended to “serve
as an emergency fund for any unit which may be unable to care for some case arising
in its territory and also to serve as a fund for worthy cases of disabled ex-service
women who may need help and who are too distant from any unit to make it practical
for that unit to help.” 122 Grants were also issued to women who could not repay a
120
Undated typed history of the WOSL, Folder: WOSL History Project, Box: WOSL-National, History
Projects, Service Projects, Rosters, 2, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI
121
Ibid, 97.
122
Ibid.
60
loan; in fact, the term loan was used even when repayment seemed unlikely in order
to provide encouragement to the recipient, or to persuade some women to accept
money they might have refused if they thought it was charity. 123
The WOSL established a national committee to handle the fund, and during the
national convention held in San Francisco in July 1924, the committee’s chairman,
Mrs. Eugene K. Sturgis, outlined the three resolutions from the 1923 convention that
had created the League’s policies on disabled ex-service women. 124 First, the WOSL
resolved to undertake “a definite and comprehensive program” to alleviate “the
suffering now existing among disabled ex-service women and that this program be
continued for as long a period as there shall be any disabled ex-service women who
are in need of help.” 125 Second, they would take on the care of all “disabled exservice women, who, for some technical reason, are debarred from receiving aid from
the U.S. Government or from a welfare organization, and also of those women whose
disability may not be directly traceable to their service overseas.” 126 Third, they
pledged to try to secure under the new Veteran’s Bureau, “a national home and
hospital for disabled and sick ex-service women, which shall be open to ex-service
women exclusively, upon the same terms that such national homes maintained by the
U.S. Government are open to men.” 127 Mrs. Sturgis highlighted how her committee
123
“Bulletin as Voted by the Eleventh Annual Convention of the Women’s Overseas Service League,”
pg. 2, Unlabeled folder, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI Museum
124
“Proceedings of Fourth Annual Convention of the Women’s Overseas Service League held at San
Francisco, California, July 14-16, 1924,” pg. 90-91, Folder: WOSL Transcript Fourth National
Convention 1924, San Francisco, Part 1 p1-125, Box: Women’s Overseas Service League: Reports,
Ann. Natl. Conventions, 1921-25 (1st-5th) Box 7, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection,
125
Ibid, 91.
126
Ibid.
127
Ibid, 91-92.
61
had already been successful with some of these goals and felt “tempered by
enthusiasm and a fine recognition of the joy which comes in serving one’s own
disabled comrades.” 128 But even as she lauded these accomplishments, Mrs. Sturgis
emphasized that many women needed assistance in proving their claims to the
Veterans’ Bureau. 129 In order to assist these women and learn more about their needs,
around 1924 the WOSL sent out 12,000 questionnaires to the WOSL and other
former overseas women that asked about disabled women’s needs in the hopes of
identifying struggling disabled women and learning about what assistance they
required. 130 These questionnaires helped the WOSL to get a better idea of the most
common and pressing issues faced by disabled overseas women. They enabled the
League to help more women outside of their organization and to also recruit new
members who could benefit from their support.
Local WOSL units constantly worked to raise money to donate to the fund. The
May 1927 edition of Carry On contained a short article from the National Service
Chairman that updated the League about local units’ contributions to the fund. 131
Titled “Does This Look as Though the W.O.S.L. Had Forgotten?” it listed the
contributions recorded by twelve different WOSL units, with donations ranging from
$10 from Mississippi to $100 from San Francisco. 132 Some units raised money for the
128
Ibid, 90-91.
Ibid, 93.
130
Ibid, 96-97.
131
Carry On, Vol. VI, No. 2, May 1927, pg. 15, Folder: 1927, Box 1922-1932, Carry On Periodical
132
Ibid.
129
62
fund in very creative ways, such as a unit in New York that raised $2000 through a
benefit performance of a play written by member Mrs. August Belmont. 133
WOSL members and local units used Carry On to promote campaigns for the
fund that members could participate in nationwide. The Omaha Unit sponsored a trip
to Paris, France to benefit the fund and advertised it on the back cover of the February
1928 edition of Carry On. 134 In another example of imaginative fundraising, in 1931,
the WOSL national leadership urged members to participate in a new project called
“The Christmas Card Club.” 135 In lieu of sending fellow members Christmas cards,
members would donate the money they normally spent on cards to the fund. 136
WOSL leaders urged members to participate and asserted that “the League has it in its
own power, through a little self-sacrifice, to increase our National Disabled Fund very
materially each year.” 137 This same issue of Carry On also suggested that members
could continue another holiday tradition of taking out “Christmas Greeting”
advertisements in the magazine in exchange for a donation to the fund as another way
to send holiday wishes to distant friends and support the fund. 138 These female
World War One veterans urged members to forego the unnecessary expenses of
friendship and use their money to support the fund.
Geographically distant units even worked together to augment the fund. After the
WOSL held their 1930 national convention in Paris, the Boston and Detroit Units
133
Carry On, Vol. III, May 1924, No 2, pg. 23, Folder: 1924, Box 1922-1932, Carry On Periodical
134
Carry On, Vol. VII, No. 1, Feb. 1928, back cover, Folder: 1928, Box 1922-1932, Carry On
Periodical Collection, Gift of Carolyn Habgood, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
135
Carry On, Vol. X, No. 1, February 1931, pg. 9, Folder: 1931, Box 1922-1932, Carry On Periodical
136
Ibid.
137
Ibid.
138
Ibid, 19.
63
donated a movie that showcased the convention to raise money for the fund. 139 The
movie would be lent to local units to screen for an admission fee which would then be
donated to the fund. 140 The Boston and Detroit Units hoped that the film would raise
money for the fund, promote and advertise the WOSL, and “serve as a permanent
record of great historic interest, not only to every member of the League, but to all
who hold sacred the memories of what our service overseas stood for.” 141 This movie
fundraiser allowed WOSL units to publicly commemorate their own wartime service
and the League while they raised money for one of their most important service
projects. Such creative projects helped connect and combine commemoration and
service.
The fund also benefited from the philanthropy of Sallie McIntosh Clark, a
WOSL member who served with the American Red Cross, and who, in her 1932 will,
created a trust that enabled the WOSL to help disabled former overseas women. Upon
her death, a trust fund of $50,000 was to be transferred to the WOSL for this purpose
for as long the WOSL needed. 142 At some point, the WOSL might disband due to the
age or death of most of its members. The trust would then be given to the American
Red Cross; this transfer occurred in January 2001, shortly after the death of the last
WOSL member from World War One. 143 This large donation bolstered the fund and
139
Carry On, Vol. XI, No. 3, August 1930, pg. 41, Folder: 1930, Box 1922-1932, Carry On Periodical
140
Ibid.
141
Ibid.
142
Letter from W.J. Bardsley to Shirley Farr, October 17, 1932, Folder: Correspondence, 1931033 re:
Sallie M. Clark Bequest (for disabled ex-service women) F 10, Box: WOSL, Rosters of women who
served & died, awards, ways and means reports, correspondence, Box 3, Women’s Overseas Service
League Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.; Biography of Sallie
McIntosh Clark, undated, MS 22 Box 5, The Women’s Overseas Service League Records, University
of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.
143
Biography of Sallie McIntosh Clark.
64
helped ensure that in later years when more WOSL members were aged and infirm,
the fund they worked so hard to maintain would be available to help them.
The WOSL also supported the few former overseas women who did receive some
government aid, especially the disabled women allowed into two government
hospitals after the WOSL’s lobbying efforts succeeded in obtaining this benefit for
them. 144 Women who officially served in the Army, Navy, or Marine Corps could
reside at a home established at Danville, Illinois, and in a special wing of a
tuberculosis hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 145 The national WOSL and many
local units aided the Danville home from its inception, but the Danville facility did
not sufficiently meet the needs of its female residents, and in March 1931 the women
were moved to the Soldier’s Home in Dayton, Ohio. 146 At Dayton, those women who
were in worse health lived in a hospital annex, while the healthier women stayed in a
former hotel known as the Miller Cottage (figure 1.7). 147 This move allowed each
woman to have her own room and to travel into town by trolley car, something
impossible at the more isolated Danville location. 148 The WOSL President at the time,
Mrs. G.H. Taubles, believed that the move was “encouraging…for it shows us that
144
Zeiger, 170.
Ibid.
146
Letter from Mrs. G.H. Taubles to All Units, February 16, 1931, Folder: Shirley Farr
Correspondence, 1924-55, Box: WOSL Correspondence, 1924-62, Congressional bills, 1929-1951,
Box 4, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City,
Missouri. For more about the Soldiers Home in Dayton, see: Kelly, Creating a National Home:
Building the Veterans’ Welfare State, 1860-1900.
147
Carry On, Vol. XII, Feb 1933, No. 1, pg. 13-15, Folder 1933, Box: 1933-1939, Carry On Periodical
Collection, Gift of Carolyn Habgood, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection. It seems that women
moved again to a different building again in March 1938. Carry On, Vol. XVII, Nov. 1938, No. 4, pg.
10, Folder: 1938, Box: 1933-1939.
148
Letter from Mrs. G.H. Taubles to All Units, February 16, 1931.
145
65
the Government is mindful of these women and a better, bigger Home will be found
as the need arises.” 149
Figure 1.7: Miller Cottage, Dayton Home. Carry On Vol. XIV, November 1935, No.
4, pg. 7. Women’s Memorial Foundation, Women’s Overseas Service League
(WOSL) Carry On Periodical Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial
Foundation.
A WOSL chairman was appointed to organize service projects that helped the
women at the Dayton home. 150 These projects included subscribing to magazines for
the residents, sending puzzles and amusements, and providing materials for them to
make and sell hooked rugs and knitted items to earn pocket money. 151 The WOSL
also began an adoption program in which local units were encouraged to “adopt”
women at the Dayton home who came from their geographic area and “by means of
letters, remembrances, and personal interest re-establish the bonds of normal
companionship which institutional life tends to destroy.” 152 Although the WOSL was
149
Ibid.
Carry On, Vol. XII, Feb 1933, No. 1, pg. 15.
151
Ibid; Carry On, Vol. XIV, Nov. 1935, No 4 pg. 6-7.
152
Carry On, Vol. XIII, May 1934, No. 2, pg. 21-22.
150
66
not in charge of the Dayton home, they supported it and aimed to “distribute the
interest and activities of the League in a way that will bring a more personal touch
into our relations with the Dayton Service Women.” 153 The WOSL recognized that
the government’s inclusion of women at these institutions represented a victory in the
fight to get overseas women some government benefits. By supporting the
government’s efforts at the Dayton home, the WOSL showed their appreciation to the
government even as they continued to advocate to obtain further government benefits
for former overseas women.
Through their support of these homes and the Fund for Disabled Overseas
Women, the WOSL created memorials constructed from human actions in place of
stone. The service of the WOSL members at these homes transformed them into
living memorials that commemorated the war by supporting the female veterans who
lived there. The memory of the war became embodied in the war’s survivors, both the
veterans who needed help and those who provided it.
Helping Their Boys: WOSL Service Towards Male Veterans
The WOSL also devoted many of their veteranist-commemoration activities to
helping male veterans. Since so many former overseas women had supported “the
boys” during the war, they felt it was their duty to continue helping them afterwards.
In 1922, National Service Committee Chairman Anne Hoyt wrote to the American
Red Cross (ARC) to determine how the WOSL could best assist their work. She told
the ARC’s Chairman, Judge Payne, that although the WOSL supported all of the
153
Ibid.
67
ARC’s work, they felt that “our program should concentrate on the one line of service
to the Ex-Service man, that being the thing for which by training, experience and
understanding, the Overseas women are most especially fitted.” 154 Hoyt asked Judge
Payne if the ARC would accept the WOSL’s offer of being its “especial—though of
course not exclusive—agency to call on at need for any backing, supplementing or
extending of its work for the Ex-Service man.” 155 The WOSL wanted to assist these
men because they felt that “we have something that no other worker for him can
have—that our grounded knowledge of him, our underlying admiration makes for a
patience that cannot tire,--and that the bond of common memories, or his sense of our
understanding, enables us to help him without his experiencing any sting or feeling of
demoralization.” 156 Having intimately aided these men during the war, the WOSL
understood their postwar service to veterans as a way to continue their wartime
duties.
Local units took this mission to heart and constantly aided male veterans. In 1927
the New England and Boston WOSL Units contributed a donation to the U.S. Blind
Veterans’ Musicale Company, an orchestra composed of blind veterans who
performed concerts to raise money for their fellow blind veterans. 157 During
Christmas in 1924, a group of women from the New York WOSL units visited the
U.S. Veterans’ Hospital No. 98 at Castle Point, New York. 158 They spent time with
154
Letter to Judge Payne from Anne Hoyt, October 6, 1922, Folder: Irene Givenwilson Cornell, 1921-3
Re: Women who died in service George Washington Memorial, Box: WOSL: Correspondence, 192462; Congressional bills, 1929-1951, Box 4, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National
WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
155
Ibid.
156
Ibid.
157
Carry On, Vol. VI, No. 2, May 1927, pg. 39-40, Folder: 1927, Box 1922-1932.
158
Carry On, Vol. V, No. 1, Feb. 1925, pg. 10-12, 53, Folder 1925, Box 1922-1932.
68
the patients, observed the work of the hospital, and celebrated Christmas. They also
sent Christmas boxes to the patients at Castle Point and two other hospitals in the
region. 159 WOSL units all across the country conducted similar service work to help
male veterans, especially those who were disabled or hospitalized.
The WOSL’s female World War One veterans also pursued service projects that
helped the “welfare of the Army and Navy,” as denoted in their mission. 160 The
WOSL actively supported the summer Citizens’ Military Training Camps (CMTC)
run by the Government and the War Department to provide voluntary military
training to young civilian men. 161 They encouraged members to volunteer as Army
hostesses who provided facilities for the men to visit with their mothers and other
women while they relaxed in a chaste environment. These hostess houses were
modeled after similar facilities constructed at stateside bases during the war. 162 Eager
to show their continued support for service members, this hostess service allowed the
WOSL to reiterate their dedication to military service and national preparedness and
enabled them to create space for women in these male dominated military landscapes,
even if they could only do so through female occupations like hostess work.
159
Ibid.
“Articles of Incorporation, 1922-29,” pg. 4.
161
Carry On, Vol. III, May 1924, No, 2, pg. 10, Folder 1924, Box 1922-1932.
162
Report on the Ninth Annual Convention—Women’s Overseas Service League Held at Minneapolis--July 6th-11th, 1929 Presented by Beatrice G. Lesser, Delegate, At the Annual Luncheon at the Union
League Club, Sept. 28, 1929; pg. 2, Unlabeled Folder; “Transcript Fourth National Convention 1924.”
pg. 106-109, Folder: WOSL Transcript Fourth National Convention 1924, San Francisco, Part 1, Box:
Women’s Overseas Service League: Reports, Ann. Natl. Conventions, 1921-25 (1st-5th) Box 7. Both
from: Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City,
Missouri. For more on WWI hostess houses see: Cynthia Brandimarte, “Women on the Home Front:
Hostess Houses during World War I,” Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter 2008): 201-222. For more on the CMTC
see: Donald M. Kington, Forgotten Summers: The Story of the Citizens’ Military Training Camps,
1921-1940 (Two Decades Publishing: San Francisco, CA, 1995).
160
69
The WOSL’s support also extended to the male veterans who served as cemetery
superintendents at the overseas American cemeteries established by the American
Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC). The Toledo, Ohio unit sent the
superintendents of the Meuse-Argonne and Oise-Aisne American Cemeteries
subscriptions to The Saturday Evening Post. 163 By supporting these cemetery
superintendents, the WOSL used acts of service to honor the Americans buried in
these cemeteries as well as the veterans who cared for their graves.
Advocacy for Former Overseas Women
As another part of their efforts to commemorate the war through community service,
the WOSL advocated on behalf of former overseas women. While many male
veterans benefited from the support and political power of organizations such as the
American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the WOSL quickly realized that
they would have to advocate for themselves if they desired similar results. The
WOSL served as the voice of former overseas women and tried to secure government
benefits based on their wartime service.
The WOSL believed that their overseas wartime service entitled them to the
benefits of what historians have called “martial citizenship.” 164 By conducting work
that the WOSL defined as military service, even if they were civilians and not
officially in the military, they believed they deserved the same special rights and
163
164
Minute Book, Toledo Unit, February 9, 1927 entry.
Zeiger, 171; Kelly, Creating a National Home: Building the Veteran’s Welfare State, 1860-1900, 2-
5.
70
benefits given to male military veterans. They asserted that they earned these rights
by fulfilling the duties of martial citizenship through their overseas service, and they
returned home “with the conviction that they had by it been set apart.” 165
The government did not completely agree, and the WOSL grappled with the
government’s refusal to grant veteran status to many women who served overseas.
Only women who officially served as members of the military could be considered
for veteran’s benefits. 166 Women who served in one of the many voluntary
organizations overseas were considered civilians and were ineligible for veterans’
benefits, even though they often worked for, with, and among the military. 167 As a
result, many members of the WOSL received no benefits or care from the government
after the war, despite any injuries, ailments, or mental afflictions they might have
suffered as a result of their wartime service. This prompted the WOSL’s commitment
to providing these women with the assistance refused by the government.
Even the women who officially served in the military struggled to gain
recognition for their service and obtain veterans’ benefits. During the war, Army and
Navy nurses served in an undefined status without official rank; they were neither
enlisted nor officers and they were not entitled to exercise authority over the men
under their care. 168 Army nurses succeeded in gaining relative rank from Congress in
June 1920, but Navy nurses did not receive this status because the Navy deemed it
165
Sillia, 2.
Ebbert and Hall, The First, the Few, the Forgotten: Navy and Marine Corps Women in World War
I, 97.
167
Zeiger, 170-171.
168
Susan H. Godson, Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy (Annapolis, Maryland:
Naval Institute Press, 2001), 70-71, 76-77; Zeiger, 109-115.
166
71
superfluous. 169 The Yeoman (F) and the women Marines, the first American women
to serve as enlisted members of the U.S. armed forces, were the only women to be
included as veterans without a fight. However, they too often struggled to receive
care, and the Navy soon barred women from future enlistments through the Naval
Reserve Act of 1925. 170 Although the minority of women who did officially serve in
the military were in a better position than most former overseas women, they still
faced challenges in receiving their benefits, especially when it came to health care
and hospitals which were not equipped to care for women. 171
The WOSL formed a National Legislative Committee to formally advocate for
legislation that would benefit former overseas women, especially those who did not
officially serve in the military. This committee collected information about legislation
relevant to the League, suggested legislation to support that was in line with their
goals, and recommended proposals for legislation which would further their
interests. 172 During her term as Legislative Committee Chairman, Mrs. Faustine
Dennis updated the WOSL about her committee’s work in the April 1932 issue of
Carry On. She described their efforts to persuade Congressman James Fitzpatrick (D,
NY) of the House of Representatives’ Military Affairs Committee, and World War
One veteran Senator Hiram Bingham III (R-CT), to consider the proposed bills which
would give government hospitalization benefits to all women who served overseas
169
Godson, 77; Zeiger, 168-169. According to Godson, the Navy Surgeon General Edward R. Stitt
asserted that Navy nurses were already treated as officers administratively and he believed their “noble
calling” already placed them on a higher plan than rank would.
170
Ebbert and Hall, 97-109; Zeiger, 169.
171
Ebbert and Hall, 103-108.
172
By-laws of the Women’s Overseas Service League,” 10
72
with the Army but were not in military service. 173 Dennis intended to advocate for
these women and testify before Congressional committees if needed. 174 She described
how she had been asked whether the WOSL should continue to press for this
legislation during the troubling times of the Great Depression. 175 Unequivocally she
answered yes, and argued that “illness and death wait on no man and on no
depression. If these sick women are to be cared for and returned to health, or helped
until the day when all human efforts cease to matter, we must keep on unwaveringly
until government hospitalization is gained for them.” 176 Even though she would not
benefit herself since she served under the ARC and not directly under the military,
she and her committee were “happy to do our utmost to help these sisters of ours.” 177
Despite the WOSL’s annual efforts to promote this legislation, that same year,
1932, Dennis and the WOSL reversed course and withdrew this legislation and other
bills that sought benefits for overseas women. 178 They decided to comply with “the
pleas of the U.S. President for an economy program” in an act of patriotic cooperation
during the Great Depression. 179 In 1933 they even went “on record as approving the
President’s economy program” that was part of the New Deal and they did not
reactivate the efforts of the Legislation Committee to lobby for overseas women’s
173
Zeiger, 170; Carry On, Vol. XI, No 2, May 1932, pg. 14-15, Folder: 1932, Box: 1922-1932,
Women’s Memorial Foundation, Carry On periodical Collection; “Fitzpatrick, James Martin,”
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, n.d.
<http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=F000175> (28 December 2014); “Bingham,
Hiram,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, n.d. <
http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=B000470> (28 December 2014).
174
Carry On, Vol. XI, No 2, May 1932, 14-15.
175
Ibid, 14.
176
Ibid, 15.
177
Ibid, 15.
178
Zeiger, 170-171; Sillia, 10.
179
Sillia, 10; Zeiger, 171.
73
benefits until 1939, after the worst of the Depression ended. 180 These decisions
demonstrated that the WOSL supported FDR and agreed with his conception of the
New Deal as a type of emergency war measure that necessitated sacrifices from the
citizenry. 181
The WOSL took similar actions in line with the New Deal regarding the Bonus,
the retroactive financial compensation originally planned to be given to First World
War veterans in 1945. 182 In her 1932 report about the Legislative Committee’s efforts
lobbying for hospitalization benefits, Dennis expressed her opposition to the
immediate payment of the Bonus. She explained how “were it a matter of a bonus,
your chairman personally would feel that we should wait until a later time.” 183 At the
1933 National Convention when Dennis was elected National President, the WOSL
publicly announced their opposition to the immediate payment of the Bonus to
overseas women, another indication that they supported FDR’s conception of the
fight against the Great Depression as a war that took priority over other matters. The
New York Times reported on July 6, 1933, that the WOSL “closed its convention
today with a declaration against payment of any bonus to women who served abroad
during the World War. Leaders said several attempts had been made to have Congress
provide compensation for nurses, welfare workers and others who saw overseas
service.” 184
180
Sillia, 10.
For more on how FDR used the analogy of war to promote the New Deal see: Sherry, In the
Shadow of War, 15-26.
182
Ortiz, 24-25.
183
Carry On, Vol. XI, No 2, May 1932, pg. 14-15.
184
“A.E.F. Women Oppose Taking Bonus,” The New York Times (New York, NY), July 7, 1933, pg. 9.
181
74
These decisions placed the WOSL squarely in support of FDR’s New Deal
economic recovery efforts that prioritized national needs and the ‘war’ against the
Great Depression over veterans’ demands, especially the immediate payment of the
Bonus. As early as his 1932 presidential campaign, Roosevelt opposed the immediate
payment of the Bonus when there were so many other pressing economic issues to
solve. 185 He viewed veterans as a minority group no more entitled to such relief than
other struggling Americans. 186 Once elected as President, FDR continued to oppose
the immediate payment of the Bonus and enacted legislation that reduced exiting
veterans’ benefits. 187 As part of his “Hundred Days” legislation early in his first term,
the “Bill to Maintain the Credit of the United States Government,” known as The
Economy Act, reduced veterans’ benefits and pensions by $460 million, sparking
what one historian described as “a rapid political mobilization by military veterans
against New Deal policy.” 188 By supporting the President’s “economy program” in
1933, the WOSL endorsed The Economy Act and its reductions of veterans’ benefits.
They put their support behind FDR and his New Deal effort to combat the Great
Depression, just as they did when they paused their legislative efforts.
The WOSL’s cooperation with FDR’s administration makes sense given their
close ties with the American Legion. During the early years of the New Deal, the
American Legion attempted to cooperate with FDR, while the Veterans of Foreign
Wars (VFW) took a more confrontational stance with FDR and joined what one
scholar called the “New Deal Dissidents” to continue the fight for immediate payment
185
Ortiz, 58-59.
Ortiz, 58-59.
187
Ortiz, 66.
188
Ortiz, 66.
186
75
of the Bonus and expanded veterans’ benefits. 189 The WOSL’s closer alignment with
the American Legion might have influenced their decision to support FDR and his
New Deal efforts to stabilize the economy, even if some of these measures reduced
veterans’ benefits. 190 The WOSL opted to temporarily sacrifice some of their goals in
order to support the President’s emergency measures to restore the American
economy.
The WOSL’s support of the New Deal and their ties with the American Legion
could help explain their relative silence about the 1932 Bonus March. During the
1932 WOSL National Convention in Los Angeles from July 4 to 7, held during the
Bonus March, the WOSL adopted a resolution to address the events happening in
Washington D.C. 191 This resolution reaffirmed the WOSL’s obligation and allegiance
to the government. It resolved for the WOSL to “recommend to the several Units the
desirability of forming a plan to work through the coming year with veterans and to
encourage their full cooperation with the Government during its difficult period of
financial adjustment.” 192 As the Bonus March divided veteran’s organizations, this
moderate statement suggested that the WOSL may have tried to remain neutral about
the issue, much like the American Legion, who declined to take sides about the Bonus
March in its official magazine. 193 This may account for the absence of a discussion
about the Bonus March or the immediate payment of the Bonus in Carry On. Taking
189
Ortiz, 66-67, 98,
The WOSL did cooperate with the VFW but seems to have had a stronger alliance with the
American Legion.
191
Carry On, Vol. XI, No 2, May 1932, pg. 26.
192
Ibid.
193
Ortiz, 32-33, 60-63. Ortiz provides an in-depth discussion and timeline of the VFW and American
Legion’s involvement with and reactions to the Bonus March.
190
76
sides might have hindered the WOSL’s service projects and their advocacy for
women veterans; rather, they stayed focused on their mission and asserted their
willingness to cooperate productively with both veterans and the government.
Although they supported the concept of the Bonus, they did not believe that
immediate payment of the Bonus was the right course at this point in the
Depression. 194
The immediate payment of the Bonus did not solve many of the issues that the
WOSL cared the most about; it would only provide temporary assistance to male
veterans and a few female veterans. The WOSL wanted long-term benefits and
recognition for all veterans, especially women, not just a temporary influx of cash as
a short-term solution. They worried more about the lasting problems that affected
veterans; for women without government benefits, addressing those problems was a
constant struggle. Faustine Dennis emphasized this difference in her 1932 article
when she clarified why she supported the bill for hospitalization benefits but not
immediate payment of the Bonus. She explained that “the whole emphasis of this bill,
in my mind, is the physical suffering of women, who deserve this care from the
government they served.” 195 Indeed, WOSL member First Lady Lou Henry Hoover
and President Hoover privately donated food, clothing, and other necessities to
veterans who participated in the Bonus March, even as they publicly opposed the
194
For more about women’s involvement with the New Deal see: Muncy, Creating a Female
Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935, Susan Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the
1930s (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982); and Susan Ware, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).
195
Women’s Memorial Foundation, Carry On periodical Collection; Box: Carry On 1922-1932,
Folder 1932; Carry On, Vol. XI, No 2, May 1932, pg. 14-15.
77
immediate payment of the bonus and the Bonus March. 196 The Bonus served as the
easy solution to veterans’ problems, while the WOSL’s commemorative service
platform pushed for a harder, but more comprehensive plan that gave all those who
served the care they deserved. The WOSL believed such a course was the best way to
commemorate the Americans who served in the war.
Preserving the History of Overseas Women
Alongside their focus on service, and in keeping with the object of their organization,
the WOSL worked to “to keep alive and develop the spirit that prompted overseas
service.” 197 This part of their mission constituted a key part of their agenda of
veteranist-commemorations. By attempting to keep the spirit of their overseas service
alive, the WOSL both commemorated women’s overseas service and staked their
claim in the commemorative narrative of the war.
The WOSL instituted a history project to document their war work for posterity.
This history project consisted of questionnaire forms that they sent out to WOSL
members, with the intention that each member would return the completed form and
include an informal narrative that described her service. The questionnaire forms
asked for standard biographical data such as the organization they worked with, the
location of their overseas work and any decorations they earned. 198 By May 1930,
196
Nancy Beck Young, Lou Henry Hoover: Activist First Lady (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of
Kansas, 2004), 157.
197
“Articles of Incorporation,” pg. 4.
198
Questionaries’ of Lucile K. Moore and Ellen Sterling Bacorn, Folder: Zada Daniels Papers
Autobiographical information on WWI women veterans, inc. citation, Box: WOSL: Correspondence,
1924-62, Congressional bills, 1929-1951, Box 4, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection,
78
WOSL National Historian Shirley Farr had received questionnaires from 1,115
women, narratives from 365 women, and both a questionnaire and a narrative from
1,228 women. 199 She urged members to submit their questionnaires, especially their
narratives, which she explained were necessary “if anyone is to ever turn these bits of
personal experience into a mosaic which will picture what American women did
overseas during the Great War.” 200
Farr emphasized the importance of including every WOSL member’s story in
the collective history of their wartime experiences. “May I urge anew,” she wrote,
“that no one will think: “Oh, what I did wasn’t important.” Please write and send in
the account of what you did, and let someone else without personal bias judge what
its value is for the general picture.” 201 Farr wrote with impressive foresight about the
importance of collecting the stories of women’s overseas service before they were
lost. She recognized that these records would be valuable to future historians who
would write their history; these documents would ensure that their stories became part
of the narrative of American participation in the First World War. By spearheading
this history project, the WOSL performed an act of service that helped to recognize,
honor, and commemorate women alongside men so that they would not be
forgotten. 202
199
Ibid.
Ibid. For more on women’s oral histories see: J. E. Smyth, “The Long Road of Women’s Memory:
Fred Zinneman’s Julia,” in Hollywood and the American Historical Film, ed. J.E. Smyth (New York:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2012); 165-182.
201
Ibid.
202
In July of 1978, WOSL National Historian Helene M. Sillia published Lest We Forget: A History of
the Women’s Overseas Service League. The WOSL donated much of their original material to the
University of Texas, San Antonio where it forms the Women’s Overseas Service League Records
today.
200
79
The WOSL also staked their claim in the commemorative narrative by
encouraging members to wear their wartime uniforms when they publicly represented
the League, especially at their national conventions. An announcement in the May
1931 issue of Carry On reminded readers that “everyone is urged to make an effort to
take her uniform to convention. The wearing of the uniform adds very much to the
impressiveness of the Memorial Service.” 203 At the 1933 National Convention, the
WOSL unanimously adopted a resolution “that the regulation uniforms prescribed
and worn during active service be adopted as the official uniforms” of the WOSL
since they were “the only ones which could possibly carry any significance to the
League.” 204 Wearing uniforms visually demonstrated the diverse ways that women
participated in the war effort overseas. The uniforms also visually connected
women’s service to the military. Even though many women served in civilian
organizations, by wearing a uniform they interpreted their work as military service,
albeit outside the official military apparatus. As chapter five demonstrates, uniforms
formed an important way that American women commemorated their wartime service
and sought inclusion in military commemoration and culture. By choosing to continue
wearing their uniforms, the WOSL women reminded the public of their service to the
military from within and outside of its ranks, and commemorated their participation
in the war through a visual reminder of their contributions.
Despite their best efforts, women’s overseas service in World War One began to
fade from public memory by the Second World War. In August 1942, former WOSL
203
204
Carry On, Vol. X, No. 2. May 1931, Pg. 42, Folder 1931, Box: 1922-1932.
Carry On Vol. XII, August 1933, No. 3, pg. 13, Folder 1933, Box: 1933-1939.
80
National President Lena Hitchcock wrote a heated public letter to The Washington
Post that criticized the newspaper for inaccurately writing that the Women’s Army
Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was the first group of uniformed American military women
to serve overseas. Hitchcock’s letter corrected this mistake and provided a brief
history of women’s overseas service in the Great War, and their postwar efforts to
gain government benefits. She concluded by saying that she and her comrades wanted
to “pass the torch we once held to the keeping of the young women of today. We wish
them God speed, honor in their great endeavor, and when their work is done, a safe
return.” 205 Through WOSL member Representative Edith Nourse Roger’s legislation
that created the WAAC, the WOSL ensured that this next generation of American
women in military service would gain better recognition and benefits than they had
themselves.
Conclusion
The Women’s Overseas Service League defined community service and advocacy as
a form of commemoration to which they devoted themselves throughout the interwar
period. Through their veteranist-commemorations, they supported, aided, and
advocated for former overseas women and male veterans. Simultaneously, they
attempted to include the story of overseas women in the historical and
commemorative narrative of the First World War so that their wartime contributions
205
Lena Hitchcock, “Before We Had The WAACS,” The Washington Post (Washington D.C.), Aug
31, 1942, pg. 8, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
81
would not be forgotten. They reminded the nation that they too had served and
fulfilled the duties of martial citizenship. Although the memory of their service
quickly faded from public memory, the WOSL hoped that their pioneering service
overseas and their postwar commitment to the nation would create more opportunities
for women to support and serve in the military in the future, as occurred during the
Second World War. In the meantime, they used the WOSL to maintain a foothold in
veterans’ affairs, national defense, and military commemoration.
By eschewing most traditional memorial projects and focusing on service, the
WOSL commemorated the past by looking toward the future. Having experienced the
war firsthand, these women returned home with a different perspective about
commemoration. They believed that continuing their own service constituted the most
appropriate memorial to the war they participated in. As they matured as an
organization, the WOSL became even more devoted to this belief and they declined
to participate in the American Red Cross’s Memorial Building to the Women of the
World War, the biggest physical memorial project that honored American women’s
service in the war. Even though the Memorial Building combined service with
traditional commemoration, this compromise was not focused enough on service for
the WOSL, who by the 1930s, formed the core of the avant-garde group of women
who promoted veteranist-commemorations.
82
Chapter 2: Service Inscribed in Stone: The Attempted
Compromise Between Service and Statue at the Memorial
Building to the Women of the World War
In the heart of downtown Washington D.C, just blocks from the White House, an
elegant neo-classical marble building occupies 1755 E Street Northwest. Set back
from the street and flanked by overgrown shrubbery, to passersby it might appear to
be just another grand government building adorned with columns. But those who
pause for a closer look will see the inscription: “In Memory of the Heroic Women of
the World War” (figure 2.1).
Figure 2.1: Front façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World
War, Washington D.C. The inscription above the columns reads: “In Memory
of the Heroic Women of the World War.” August 16, 2013. Photograph by
83
The Memorial Building to the Women of the World War, as the building is
known, characterized the overlap between women’s attempts to pursue veteranistcommemorations and to erect statuary memorials. Built by an influential group of
female leaders at the headquarters of the American National Red Cross (ARC), this
Memorial Building embodies the interwar debates between female veteranistcommemorators regarding the best way to memorialize the war and women’s
contributions to it.206 Through this Memorial Building, the women of the ARC tried
to find a compromise between a traditional physical memorial and service to the
living. Their choice underscored that veteranist-commemorations did not completely
overtake traditional memorials. At the same time, the WOSL believed the ARC’s
attempted compromise did not focus enough on service and they viewed it as a
failure.
By specifically memorializing women’s wartime services, this Memorial
Building pushed for the inclusion of women in the narrative of the American memory
of the Great War. When individual elements of the building were used to
commemorate specific individuals and groups of women, the Memorial Building
became a commemorative site that encompassed the variety of women’s contributions
to the war. The building aspired to become the epicenter of the female memory of the
war, a location where women’s wartime contributions gained first-class status in the
commemorative landscape. As a structure that aimed to facilitate women’s postwar
206
The American Red Cross has undergone several name and acronym changes throughout its
existence. Whitney Hopkins and Susan Watson of the Historical Programs and Collections Department
at the American Red Cross National Headquarters advised me to refer to the organization using the
acronym ARC.
84
volunteer service within its walls, the building publicly affirmed that women’s
national service did not stop when the guns of war were silenced.
Led by the women of the ARC and joined by other women connected to the
war effort, this group memorialized the significant wartime contributions of
American women, defined broadly to include all types of service and sacrifice. As
noted in chapter one, service meant any type of service to the nation whether it was
actual uniformed service in a wartime organization or grassroots volunteer and
community service activities on the home front. 207 Sacrifice encompassed the
hardships that women endured during these activities, as did mothers, wives, and
sisters who supported military members and endured the heartbreak of their deaths or
injuries. These inclusive definitions of service and sacrifice enabled the many official
and unofficial ways that women aided the war effort to be included and
commemorated.
By trying to compromise, this group of women pursued two simultaneous
goals. First, they tried to argue that because of American women’s traditional
commitment to volunteer work, service-based commemorations were the most
appropriate types of memorialization projects for women to sponsor, and could be
combined with elements of statuary memorials. Their attempted compromise failed to
gain the support of the WOSL and revealed the disagreements among overlapping
groups of female veteranist-commemorators about how best to pursue their goals.
Second, by dedicating a memorial to women’s wartime contributions defined so
207
The ARC wartime publicity campaign advertised nursing with posters announcing that “Nursing is
Military Service.” Jones, The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal, 168.
85
inclusively, these women attempted to legitimize the value of all forms of female
wartime service and insisted that women should be honored just like men. By
combining a memorial to women’s services and sacrifices with a building devoted to
community service, the project constituted tangible evidence of women’s
contributions to the military, the nation, and local communities, in spite of genderbased restrictions on women’s citizenship that excluded them from many official
types of national service. As women worked to gain the full rights of enfranchised
citizens after the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, the Memorial Building to
the Women to the World War aimed to send an important message to the nation’s
capital: despite the limitations imposed on them, women had contributed to the war
effort and continued to serve their nation.
The Background of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War
A group of influential women within the ARC spearheaded the effort to create the
Memorial Building to the Women of the World War. Led by Mabel T. Boardman, a
wealthy Washington D.C. philanthropist and a prominent leader of the ARC who
served as its National Secretary from 1921 to 1944, these women crafted a powerful
argument for a memorial that honored American women’s service in the World
86
War. 208 They successfully gained permission from Congress to construct the building
on government property at the Red Cross Headquarters in Washington D.C.
In choosing what type of memorial to build, the women of the ARC initiated a
heated debate about the proper way to commemorate the war; this debate reflected the
larger national conversation about memorialization that occurred after the war. Their
arguments, and those of their opponents, illuminate the contentious nature of the
interwar commemorative culture. The ARC’s final decision to construct a living
memorial building indicated womens’ commitment to serving the nation and their
interpretation of service as a form of commemoration.
The women who created the Memorial Building emerged from the Progressive
era and were influenced by women’s involvement with service and reform activities
at the turn of the century. Whether they were involved with a settlement house, social
work, or policy that dealt with women’s and children’s issues, Progressive women
devoted themselves to serving their local communities, state, and nation. 209 As such,
they created a niche for American women to serve their country through their
professional careers, volunteer projects, service, and wage work. By the time the U.S.
entered the war in 1917, it seemed natural for women to serve the nation at home and
208
Irwin, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening,
28; Thomas Martin, Elizabeth G. McPherson, and David Mathisen, revised by Brian McGuire, “Mabel
Thorp Boardman: A Register of Her Papers in the Library of Congress” (Washington D.C.: Manuscript
Division, Library of Congress, 2006), 3, <http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/eadmss.ms006042> (6 Feb 2015).
209
See: Sklar, “Hull House: A Community of Women Reformers;” Gordon, “Social Insurance and
Public Assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States, 1890-1935;”
Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935.
209
Irwin, 28.
87
abroad, and this tradition continued after the war through veteranistcommemorations. 210
Founded in 1881 by the famous Civil War nurse Clara Barton, the ARC acted
as the United States’ chapter of the International Committee of the Red Cross. 211 Like
all Red Cross chapters, the ARC served as a neutral organization that provided aid to
soldiers during wars. 212 The ARC also took on the unique task of assisting civilians
during natural disasters and other peacetime crises under the “American Amendment”
to the Geneva Treaty. 213 In 1900, Barton established the ARC’s legitimacy when the
organization received a Congressional Charter that incorporated it into the Federal
Government and designated it as the official organization to carry out the Geneva
Convention in the U.S. and to act as the official U.S. voluntary aid association. 214 Just
a few years after this victory, organizational infighting led by Mabel Boardman
forced Barton to resign as President. 215 Now in control of the ARC, Boardman
strengthened its connections to the federal government and increased the
government’s authority over the organization while she simultaneously gained
considerable personal power over the ARC. 216
After the U.S. entered the World War in April 1917, President Woodrow
Wilson designated the ARC as the official organization to coordinate U.S.
humanitarian assistance. General John J. Pershing, Commander of the American
210
Marian Moser Jones discusses how within the ARC, the Progressive professionalism of men often
conflicted with the female culture of volunteerism. Jones, xiii.
211
Irwin, 5, 15.
212
Irwin, 5.
213
Irwin, 5; The American Red Cross, “Who Are We: Our History,” American Red Cross, n.d.
<http://www.redcross.org/about-us/history> (16 October 2013).
214
Irwin, 27.
215
Irwin, 28-29.
216
Irwin, 30.
88
Expeditionary Forces (AEF), also designated it as one of the four official AEF
welfare agencies. 217 Equally important, the ARC expanded it ranks and supplied over
18,000 professional uniformed Red Cross nurses to the military; overall, around
24,000 ARC nurses served during the war, both in the U.S. and in Europe. 218 After
the war, they constituted one of the principal groups of women, many professionals
with careers, commemorated by the Memorial Building.
Memorialization Trends after the First World War
The aftermath of the First World War sparked a memorial-building boom in the U.S.
as Americans organized to commemorate the recent victory. 219 Memorial projects
constituted a popular cultural trend that resulted in diverse memorials still visible
today in towns across America. 220 The ARC bought into this memorial boom and
planned two major memorial projects: a statuary memorial to the deceased ARC
leader Jane A. Delano and the other nurses who lost their lives, and a living memorial
building dedicated to the services and sacrifices of American women during the
World War.
217
Irwin, 73, 109. The others organizations were the Y.M.C.A., the Salvation Army, and the Knights
of Columbus.
218
Library of Congress, “American Women: Health and Medicine: Red Cross and World War,” The
Library of Congress: American Memory n.d.
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awmss5/red_cross.html> (18 October 2013; US Army, “The
Army Nurse Corps,” Women in the U.S. Army n.d. <http://www.army.mil/women/nurses.html> (18
October 2013); Jones, 157.The ARC estimated that about 10,000 American nurses served overseas.
Dorothy and Carl Schneider, 287.
219
Trout, On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance, 19191941, 1; Winter, Remembering War: The Great War Between History and Memory in the Twentieth
Century, 1.
220
For an examination of statuary memorial trends in U.S. WWI memorials see: Jennifer Wingate,
“Doughboys, Art Worlds, and Identities: Sculpted Memories of World War I in the United States,” 3952 and Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America’s World War I
Memorials.
89
Physical memorials to the First World War varied in material, form, shape,
size, location, and other factors. Americans constructed memorials throughout the
nation in big cities and small towns, as well as at the overseas battlefields. Some
memorials were unobtrusive markers that did not alter the physical landscape in
significant ways, such as the bronze memorial plaques often placed on government
buildings to honor employees who died in the war. 221 Memorial trees were also
popular, especially in cities, parks, and along roadways. 222
The most common memorials were statuary monuments and utilitarian
memorials. 223 Statutory memorials represented the most traditional monument form
used after the First World War. Extremely popular, their main function was to act as
an aesthetically pleasing piece of art to commemorate the war; they often depicted the
average Doughboy. 224 But some Americans came to believe that the most fitting
memorials served a purpose beyond simply commemoration through art. Such
memorials still aimed for aesthetic beauty, but they were also able to serve the
communities in which they were built. Interchangeably called utilitarian memorials,
living memorials, and liberty buildings, these structures often took the form of a
221
Examples of these plaques were found in: Project Files 1910-1952, Records Relating Primarily to
Projects, World War I Memorials, Record Group 66: Commission of Fine Arts, National Archives
Building, Washington D.C. Interstate Commerce Commission, Library of Congress Memorial: Box
211. Forest Service: Box 210. Agriculture Department: Box 209. National Archives Building,
Washington DC.
222
Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys, 8, 75, 79.
223
Several authors provide short overviews of the debates occurring in the U.S. over the best way to
commemorate the war, centered on whether a memorial should be utilitarian or a traditional stone
structure. Kurt Piehler, “Remembering the War to End All Wars” in Unknown Soldiers: The American
Expeditionary Forces in Memory and Remembrance, ed. Mark Snell, 29, 41-44; Jennifer Wingate,
“Doughboys, Art Worlds, and Identities,”39-52, Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys.
224
For an in-depth analysis of WWI statues see Wingate, “Doughboys, Art Worlds, and Identities” and
Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America’s World War I Memorials.
90
memorial building that housed a community service or civic organization. 225 They
could also be used for recreational purposes such as stadiums, bandstands, or towers
with city views. 226
Utilitarian memorials prompted lively debate among commentators. Those
who supported them often cited the ideals of the war as their justification. An article
in the December 1918 edition of The American City called for the construction of
liberty buildings as victory monuments. It argued that because the Great War, more
than any other war, had been fought for the principles of liberty and democracy, it
could best be commemorated with a living memorial focused on those principles. 227
Although the author admitted that non-utilitarian memorials could depict those
principles, they argued that those memorials would “not have life” and that a
monument that symbolized the recent war and those who died in it must immortalize
“the principles for which they made the supreme sacrifice…by giving service rather
than a statue or a shaft in which there could not pulse the life blood of a new day.” 228
Such strong connections to the war’s principles convinced many Americans,
including some in the ARC, that living memorial buildings were a fitting form of
225
For an analysis of the origins of living memorials see: Shanken, “Planning Memory: Living
Memorials in the United States During World War II”; Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys, 70-84, 190191, Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World War, 220-221; Michele H. Bogart,
Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890-1930 (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1989), 284. For information on Liberty Buildings see: Britanik, 69.
226
Examples of this type of memorial include the Washington D.C. WWI Memorial (a bandstand) and
the Liberty Memorial, Kansas City, MO (a tower and tourist attraction).
227
“Liberty Buildings as Victory Monuments,” The American City, December 1918, Folder: Project
Files World War I Memorials (General), Box 208, RG 66, NAB; “About Us,” American City and
County (7 January 2014) <http://americancityandcounty.com/about>; Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys,
79; Blair, The Torchbearers: Women and their Amateur Arts Associations in America, 1890-1930,
103-106.
228
“Liberty Buildings as Victory Monuments.”
91
commemoration. Living memorials also embodied the principles of the Progressive
Movement because they concretely gave back to the community. 229
Others opposed living memorials and favored statuary monuments instead. In
April 1920, the famous sculptor and art patron Mrs. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a
designer of statuary memorials and who had served overseas during the war,
published an article in Arts and Decoration that denounced utilitarian living
memorials. 230 Whitney believed that art should give pleasure to people and did not
need to fulfill additional purposes. She saw utilitarian memorials as a
misunderstanding of the purpose of artistic war memorials and thought that they took
glory away from those being honored. She did not deny that the hospitals, stadiums,
and other buildings created as living memorials were important and necessary, but
she believed that they “have nothing to do with war memorials.” 231 Whitney
denounced utilitarian memorials and urged Americans to build what she sarcastically
called “useless memorials” unable to be mistaken for anything other than a
memorial. 232 According to Whitney, such “useless” memorials would not get lost in
the landscape of a city or have their memorial purposes forgotten; they would stand as
permanent reminders of the war and fulfill what Whitney saw as the true goal of a
229
Piehler, “Remembering the War to End All Wars,” 41-43. Shanken, 132.
Whitney designed several WWI memorials such as the St. Nazaire Memorial in France as well as
the small sculpture “The Spirit of the Red Cross” which resides in the Civil War Building at the ARC
Headquarters today. Jennifer Meehan, “A Finding Aid to the Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney papers,
1851-1975, Bulk 1888-1942, in the Archives of American Art” Archives of American Art, n.d.
<http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/gertrude vanderbilt-whitney-papers-7107/more> (5 December
2013); Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, “The Useless Memorial,” Arts and Decoration Vol. 12, No. 6
(April 25 1920): 421. For more on Whitney see: Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys, 84-85, 115-116, 129134.
231
“The Useless Memorial.”
232
Ibid.
230
92
memorial. 233 Even though she served and sacrificed in the war and was a member of
the WOSL, Whitney opposed some aspects of veteranist-commemorations. Her
opinion shows how these women often disagreed with each other and how veteranistcommemorations did not completely overtake “useless” statuary memorials. 234
Some important officials in the art world agreed with Whitney. The
Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), the official advisory board that presides over
Washington D.C.’s artistic and architectural development, published a pamphlet
about war memorials that indicated that they preferred statuary memorials. 235 The
CFA believed memorials should be “devoid of practical utility, but…minister to a
much higher use; they compel contemplation of the great men and ideals which they
commemorate.” 236 Despite this statement, which ignored the possibility that
memorials could commemorate great women as well as great men, the CFA still
seemed divided about utilitarian memorials. In the same pamphlet, the CFA conceded
that living memorials did have some value. They described memorial buildings as
“devoted to high purposes, educational or humanitarian, that whether large or small,
costly or inexpensive, would through excellence of design be an example and
inspiration to present and future generations.” 237 But the CFA cautioned that if a
memorial building were constructed, it must “impress the beholder by beauty of
233
Ibid.
Whitney’s name appears in several membership rosters of the WOSL. Box 1922-1932 and Box:
1933-1939, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On Periodical Collection, Gift of
Carolyn Habgood, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
235
For a history of the CFA see: Sally Kress Tompkins, A Quest for Grandeur: Charles Moore and the
Federal Triangle (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 1-9.
236
“War Memorials: Suggestions as to the Forms of Memorials and the Methods of Obtaining
Designers,” Folder: Project Files World War I Memorials (General), Box 207, RG 66, NAB.
237
Ibid.
234
93
design, the permanent nature of the material used, and the fitness of the setting.” 238
As might be expected, the CFA valued artistic achievement above all else, especially
utilitarian goals. Perhaps as a form of appeasement, the CFA included utilitarian
memorials in their suggestions with the disclaimer that artistic beauty must still take
precedence.
The ARC’s decision to construct a living memorial building dedicated to
women’s roles in the World War placed the organization in the center of the debate
between traditional monuments and utilitarian living memorial buildings. By building
what they argued was a living memorial, they confirmed their support for utilitarian
buildings. But they also erected a traditional statuary memorial to honor Jane A.
Delano and other deceased nurses on the grounds of their headquarters, just behind
the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War. That decision, along with
their choice to designate architectural details of the Memorial Building as individual
memorials, demonstrated that they still clung to some aspects of more traditional
memorials and tried to find a middle ground.
Even with these concessions, the ARC’s decision to erect what they argued was a
living memorial building as their principal monument to the World War wedded them
to the utilitarian memorial movement. The ARC defined this project as a living
memorial building and believed it would fulfill the service purpose required of living
memorials. They interpreted their choice as a way to embrace female veteranistcommemorators’ argument that memorial projects should involve service activities,
238
Ibid.
94
even though the WOSL later asserted that the project did not constitute a successful
living memorial building.
The Memorial Building to the Women of the World War was not the first living
memorial building constructed at the ARC headquarters in Washington D.C. In 1917,
the ARC completed their first headquarters building and dedicated it as a “Memorial
to the Heroic Women of the Civil War” (figures 2.2 and 2.3). 239 Built on the same
government land where the World War building would later be located, and also
authorized by Congress, it commemorated the women of the North and South during
the Civil War. 240 Just a few blocks from the ARC’s former temporary headquarters
inside the State, War, and Navy Building next to the White House (today’s
Eisenhower Executive Office Building), the new headquarters’ positioned the ARC in
close proximity to the federal agencies it collaborated with and depended upon for its
future. This first memorial building created a precedent at the ARC Headquarters
which would be followed after the First World War to honor the latest generation of
women to support the nation.
239
American Red Cross, “American Red Cross National Headquarters Visitor’s Guide” (American Red
Cross, June 2007), informational pamphlet; Shane MacDonald, Guided Tour of American Red Cross
National Headquarters, 16 August 2013.
240
“American Red Cross National Headquarters Visitor’s Guide;” letter Nov 13, 1920 to Mr. Hughes
from Miss Butle, Folder 301: Delano, Jane Sept-Dec 1920, Box 22, American Red Cross Historical
and WWI Nurse Files, RG 200: National Archives Gift Collection, Records of the American National
Red Cross, NACP; 38 Stat. 233.
95
Figure 2.2: Front façade of the Memorial to the Heroic Women of the Civil
War, Washington D.C. May 31, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.3: Detail of the front façade of the Memorial to the Heroic Women of
the Civil War, Washington D.C. The inscription under the cornice reads: “In
Memory of the Heroic Women of the Civil War.” May 31, 2013. Photograph
by Allison S. Finkelstein.
96
President Woodrow Wilson laid the cornerstone for the Memorial to Heroic
Women of the Civil War on March 27, 1915, as the Great War raged in Europe.
Construction of the neoclassical marble building began shortly afterward. 241 Three
stained-glass memorial windows by the Louis Comfort Tiffany Studio memorialized
the women who lost relatives in the Civil War and cared for the sick and wounded
combatants. A joint gift from the Women’s Relief Corps of the North and the United
Daughters of the Confederacy, these windows symbolized the sectional reconciliation
that the building encouraged. 242 They added a spiritual element to the structure since
stained glass windows are traditionally found in religious buildings like churches and
cathedrals. These windows featured Christian themes and images such as St.
Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Filomena, and figures that represented Mercy, Faith, Hope,
and Charity. 243 As one of the building’s most prominent features, the memorial
windows connected the building and the ARC’s mission to Christianity. This
connection to Christianity differentiated the Civil War building from the later World
War building, which lacked clear religious references and Christian undertones. This
distinction demonstrates the more secular nature of the World War building and how
the ARC changed their approach to memorial buildings after World War One.
A little over a month after the U.S. entered the World War, President Wilson
returned to the ARC headquarters on May 12, 1917, to dedicate the completed
241
Ibid.
“American Red Cross National Headquarters Visitor’s Guide” and Guided Tour of American Red
Cross National Headquarters. For more about the Women’s Relief Corps, see: Morgan, Women and
Patriotism in Jim Crow America.
243
Undated postcards of the memorial windows, Folder: “ARC Buildings-Memorial Windows, Stained
Glass,” Box:
ARC Buildings and Memorials: Civil War Memorial, Women of World War, DC Chapter, Old
Georgetown Road, Ballroom Open House 6/16/2006, ARC New National Headquarters, American Red
Cross National Headquarters Archive, Washington D.C.
242
97
Memorial to the Heroic Women of the Civil War. 244 Wilson used his speech at the
dedication ceremony to defend the nation’s entrance into the conflict and gain support
for the war effort. 245 Afterwards, the President reviewed about one thousand members
of the Women’s Volunteer Aid Corps, an occasion which The Washington Post
believed to be the first mobilization of uniformed women war workers in the U.S. 246
At the building’s dedication, the Civil War and the First World War collided.
Americans celebrated the reunion of the North and the South by honoring women
from both sides, while a new generation of American women began to participate in a
new war effort. Thirteen years later, in 1930, these women would be honored at the
same site with a memorial building of their own that cemented their place in the
landscape of memory at the Red Cross’s Headquarters.
“The Spirit of Nursing”: The Jane Delano Memorial
As a leader of American nursing at the turn of the century, Jane Arminda Delano
created the American Red Cross Nursing service, which she led during the First
World War. A former superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps before she stepped
down to focus on the ARC, under her direction the American Red Cross Nursing
Service provided the majority of the Army and Navy nurses during the war. 247 While
she surveyed the conditions of American nurses still stationed overseas, on April 15,
244
“New Marble Home of the American Red Cross Dedicated,” St. Louis Post – Dispatch, 13 May
1917, pg. 1, available on ProQuest Historical Newspapers (30 October 2013).
245
Ibid; “Wilson Eulogizes Our Principles” Los Angeles Times, 13 May 1917, pg. 15, ProQuest
Historical Newspapers (30 October, 2013); “Red Cross Home Dedication May 12,” The Washington
Post, pg. 7, 16 April 1917, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (30 October, 2013).
246
“Red Cross Home Dedication May 12;” “New Marble Home of the American Red Cross
Dedicated.”
247
Jones, 167-168.
98
1919, in Savenay, France, Delano died suddenly of mastoiditis, an infection of the ear
and skull that could possibly have been a complication from influenza. 248 Her death at
age fifty-seven shocked the ARC, and in addition to various memorial ceremonies,
efforts began to construct a permanent memorial in her honor. 249
The ARC established the Delano Fund Committee to pursue this secondary
memorial project at their headquarters, even while they also chose to erect a living
memorial building as their main monument to the war. Completed in 1933, the Jane
Delano Memorial, officially named “The Spirit of Nursing,” honored the service and
sacrifices of Delano and the other 296 American Nurses estimated at that time to have
died during World War One. Many of these women succumbed to influenza during
the pandemic of 1918, one of the leading causes of wartime death for American
women who served in the war. 250 In contrast to the Memorial Building to the Women
of the World War, this statue had no service component or utilitarian purpose; it was
intended purely for commemorative purposes (figure 2.4).
248
“Noted R. C. Worker is Dead in Paris,” Miami Herald, 19 April 1919, p. 5, America’s Historical
Newspapers (17 October 2013); “Jane A. Delano Memorial Pamphlet,” Folder: 301: Delano, Jane
Jan.-Dec. 1921, Box 22, American Red Cross Historical And WWI Nurse Files, RG 200, NACP;
Kathleen Burger Johnson, “Delano, Jane Arminda (1862-1919)” in An Encyclopedia of American
Women at War: From Home front to the Battlefields, ed. Lisa Tendrich Frank (Santa Barbara, CA:
ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2013): 186-187;187; Gavin, 62-63.
249
“Letter from F.C. Munrow, Red Cross General Manager to all department and bureau heads of HQ
April 18, 1919,” Folder 301, Box 21, American Red Cross Historical And WWI Nurse Files, RG 200,
NACP. Numerous examples of memorial ceremonies for Delano were found in: Box 21, American
Red Cross Historical And WWI Nurse Files, Record Group 200, NACP. A committee formed in April
1920 to organize efforts for a memorial to Delano. Clara D. Noyes, “Unveiling of Memorial to Our
Heroic Nurses,” in the Red Cross Courier, pg. 358-359, Folder 005. Nurses Memorial, Box 1, RG 200
1917-1934, NACP.
250
Gavin, 11-12, 63-64, 75, 157, 252-256. The number of American nurses who died during their
wartime service varies; a definitive number is hard to verify. The “Spirit of Nursing” used the number
they had at the time and it may not be accurate.
99
Figure 2.4: “The Spirit of Nursing” Memorial, Red Cross Headquarters,
The decision to erect a statue emerged after years of debate about the possible
ways to memorialize Delano and the deceased nurses. In December 1921, Lillian L.
White wrote to Clara Noyes about how they needed to communicate with all Red
Cross nurses and districts to get their opinions about what type of memorial they
wanted to build with the money raised by the Delano Fund Committee. White
included four possible choices, none of which were statuary memorials. These
choices included a home for ailing nurses, a hospital for nurses, using the money to
augment the National Relief Fund, or the creation of a pension fund for nurses. 251 A
utilitarian memorial appealed to the Red Cross even before the later idea for the living
memorial building had been fully formulated.
251
“Letter, Lillian L. White to Clara Noyes,” Folder 301, Box, 22, American Red Cross Historical and
WWI Nurse Files, RG 200, NACP.
100
The Delano Fund also pursued the possibility of a traditional statue, which
they ultimately decided upon. In 1927, the CFA rejected a design by Gertrude
Vanderbilt Whitney, one that she provided to the ARC free of charge. 252 By this time,
the process of choosing a memorial had become so mired in debate that the Delano
Fund Committee chairman, Adda Eldredge, realized that ARC members were
confused about the Fund’s plans for the memorial. She attempted to clarify the
situation, offering stakeholders a choice between a statue and a utilitarian
memorial. 253 Mabel Boardman also proposed a memorial room dedicated to Delano
and the deceased nurses inside the Memorial Building to the Women of the World
War, her new project. 254 She thought that using this utilitarian memorial room for
service projects “would inspire and help to carry on the nursing services of the Red
Cross.” 255 Although Boardman had initially favored a statuary memorial, she realized
that “the many monuments now in Washington are becoming a detriment to the
beauty of the city and tend to give it, as many think, the appearance of a
graveyard.” 256 Now that the memorial building project was underway, perhaps
Boardman thought it best to consolidate the two projects and focus on the service
building. Of course, Boardman’s personal investment in the Memorial Building
project may also have influenced her opinion. In the end, Boardman lost the battle
and a traditional statuary monument was built on the grounds of the Red Cross
252
“Report of the Delano Committee to the State Nurse’s Association, July 9, 1927,” Mabel Thorp
Boardman Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
253
“Letter from Adda Eldredge,” Folder 005. Nurses Memorial, Box 1, RG 200 1918-1934, NACP.
254
I learned that Minnigerode was the Superintendent of Nurses for the U.S. Public Health Service
from: Letter to Boardman from Minnigerode, 29 June 1928, p. 1, Box 10, Mabel Thorp Boardman
Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; “Letter from Boardman to
Minnigerode,” pg. 1, Folder 005. Nurses Memorial, Box 1, RG 200 1917-1934, NACP.
255
Ibid.
256
Ibid, 2.
101
Headquarters. 257 The Delano Memorial Fund later used part of their resources to
dedicate an Ionic marble column in memory of Delano and the other deceased nurses
on the Memorial Building (figure 2.5). 258
Figure 2.5: Detail of the column dedicated to Jane Delano and deceased Red
Cross Nurses, front façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the
World War, Washington D.C. The inscription reads: “To Jane A. Delano and
296 Nurses Who Lost Their Lives in the War.” August 16, 2013. Photograph
by Allison S. Finkelstein.
R. Tait McKenzie, the designer of the “Spirit of Nursing” memorial in honor
of Delano and her colleagues, had a personal connection to the war: he was a
Canadian sculptor, physician, and physical therapist who served as a medical officer
in England during the war and whose wife, Ethel O’Neill McKenzie, was a WOSL
257
“Unveiling of Memorial to Our Heroic Nurses,” 358.
Abstract of Report of the Delano Memorial Fund, January 17, 1921,” Folder 005, Nurses Memorial
Jane A. Delano & 296 Nurses Who Died in World War I, Box 1, RG 200, NACP.
258
102
member who served with the Red Cross in England. 259 His design of the “Spirit of
Nursing” memorial consisted of a central bronze statue of a nurse who stands within a
marble stele flanked on both sides by curved marble benches (see figure 2.4). The
backs of these benches contain an inscription of lines from the 91st psalm: “thou shalt
not be afraid for the terror by night. Nor for the arrow that walketh in darkness. Nor
for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.” 260 Since the memorial honored all nurses
from the various nursing organizations that died during the war and not just Delano
and ARC nurses, McKenzie intentionally designed the nurse as a general
representation of female nurses. 261 The nurse depicted in the statue wore no specific
uniform and bore no resemblance to any particular nurse, despite facing initial
criticisms for this from the CFA. 262
The memorial’s design and inscription infused it with religious and Christian
overtones and connected it to wartime imagery. The figure of the nurse bore a striking
resemblance to Michelangelo’s Madonna della Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome
(figure 2.6). 263 This stylistic similarity presented the American nurse as a type of
religious mother to the soldiers she treated. It compared the nurse to the Mother Mary
259
“Unveiling of Memorial to Our Heroic Nurses,” 358. Mrs. R. Tait McKenzie was a member of the
Philadelphia WOSL unit. “Presented at Court,” pg. 21, Carry On No. 3, Vol. VI, Aug 1927, MS 22
Box 37, The Women’s Overseas Service League Records, University of Texas at San Antonio
Libraries Special Collections; Theresa R. Snyder, revised by Nicole Topich, “R. Tait McKenzie
Papers, 1880-1940,” University of Pennsylvania, University Archives & Records Center, 2012
<http://www.archives.upenn.edu/faids/upt/upt50/mckenzie_rt.html> (22 January 2015); Simon Fraser
University Library Digital Collections, “McKenzie, Ethel O’Neil,” Canada’s Early Women Writers,
1980-2014 <http://content.lib.sfu.ca/cdm/ref/collection/ceww/id/174> (22 January 2015).
260
“Unveiling of Memorial to Our Heroic Nurses,” 358-359.
261
“Letter to Mr. Cammerer,” Folder: Project Files: Jane A. Delano Memorial, Box 43, RG 66,
National Archives, Washington D.C.
262
Letters from several members of the CFA to McKenzie criticized the design of the memorial. These
letters can be found in: Folder: Project Files: Jane A. Delano Memorial, Box 43, RG 66, NAB.
263
Peter Spring, translator and editor, Guide to the Vatican: Museums and City (Edizioni Musei
Vaticani: Vatican City, 2007), 215-216.
103
and imbued her with a Christian mission of caring for America’s sons. This pictorial
comparison of the nurse to the Madonna dominated World War One era Red Cross
imagery and became an iconic part of their wartime posters. These posters featured
drawings of ARC nurses that looked similar to both the Madonna and the “Spirit of
Nursing” statue. One of the most famous of these posters, entitled “The World’s
Greatest Mother,” showed a nurse cradling a wounded soldier on a stretcher in a pose
similar to how the Madonna cradles Christ in Michelangelo’s Pietà (figure 2.7). 264 A
poster for the Third Red Cross Roll Call shows a younger nurse holding out her hands
in the same position as the nurse in the “Spirit of Nursing” (figure 2.8). Both nurses
on these posters featured flowing headpieces that looked like nun’s habits and
mimicked the head covering on the Madonna; this connected the nurses to religious
symbolism.
264
Irwin 86; Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys, 175-176; John M. Kinder, “Iconography of Injury:
Encountering the Wounded Soldier’s Body in American Poster Art and Photography of World War I,”
in Picture This: World War I Posters and Visual Culture, ed. Pearl James (Lincoln, NE: University of
Nebraska Press, 2009), 345-347.
104
Figure 2.6: The Madonna della Pietà by Michelangelo, St. Peter’s Basilica,
Rome. Photograph by Stanislav Traykov, Wikimedia Commons.
Figure 2.7: ARC poster “The Greatest Mother in the World,” circa 1918. The
Library of Congress.
105
Figure 2.8: ARC poster “Third Red Cross Roll Call,” 1918. Library of
Congress.
The CFA worried about the religious undertones of the memorial, and like
Boardman, they feared that the proliferation of monuments in Washington D.C.
would soon make the city seem like a cemetery. They thought that the memorial
“carried the suggestion of a cemetery memorial instead of a civic monument” and
believed it seemed more religious than secular. 265 Although many memorials to the
First World War constructed during the interwar period included religious
symbolism, the Memorial Building to the Women of the First World War remained
secular, while the “Spirit of Nursing” statue located just behind it, contained religious
elements. 266 Perhaps the more traditional statuary memorial seemed appropriate for
265
“Letter to Mr. Cammerer.”
Many memorials to the First World War were in the shape of a cross, such as the Memorial Peace
Cross in Bladensburg, MD. All of the overseas American WWI cemeteries run by the American Battle
Monuments Commission used headstones in the shape of crosses or Stars of David instead of the
266
106
Christian iconography, while the more modern Memorial Building seemed too
secular to include religious references like in the earlier Civil War Building. Several
years later in 1938, the Army and Navy Nurse Corps unveiled a statue in memory of
deceased nurses in the nurses section of Arlington National Cemetery (figure 2.9). 267
Designed by Frances Rich, this marble statue adopted a more modern and almost artdeco aesthetic without blatant religious references. 268 Although this nurse still wore
the traditional cape, it did not cover her head like the “Spirit of Nursing,” and she
looks less like the Madonna than the ARC statue. The Arlington statue seems to
demonstrate how over time, nurse statues evolved farther away from the religious
imagery of the Pietà.
rectangular-shaped headstone used in military cemeteries in the U.S. These religious headstone and the
Chapels at each ABMC cemetery give the cemeteries a distinctly religious tone.
267
“Memorial to Honor Army and Navy Nurses,” The Star, November 7, 1938, Folder: Project Files
Arlington National Cemetery-Army & Navy Nurses Memorial, Box: Records Relating Primarily to
Projects, PROJECT FILES, 1910-1952, Arlington National Cemetery-Army & Navy Nurses Memorial
To Arlington National Cemetery-Expansion, Box 19 PI 79-Entry 17, RG 66:Commission of Fine Arts,
National Archives, Washington D.C.; Arlington National Cemetery, “Nurses Memorial,” Arlington
National Cemetery: Explore the Cemetery, n.d. <http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore-theCemetery/Monuments-and-Memorials/Nurses-Memorial> (27 December 2014.
268
“Arlington Monument Unveiled to Watch Over Graves of Nurses,” The Washington Post,
November 9, 1938, pg. 2, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
107
Figure 2.9: Nurses Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington,
Virginia. The memorial is located in a section of the cemetery where WWI
nurses are buried. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein. June 9, 2014.
The coexistence of the “Spirit of Nursing” memorial and the Memorial
Building to the Women of the World War demonstrates that debates between statuary
memorials and living memorials occurred even within the same organization. Despite
their decision to collectively commemorate women through a new memorial building,
the ARC community still wanted to honor the individual memories of the deceased
nurses in a more traditional manner. Like some other veteranist-commemorators, but
unlike the WOSL, they did not completely reject all forms of statuary memorials; this
choice reveals the ongoing disagreements within the overlapping ranks of female
veteranist-commemorators.
108
Choosing a Memorial Building
The memorial building that ultimately became the ARC’s main World War One
memorial at their National Headquarters in Washington D.C. honored the services
and sacrifices of all American women in the war. It constituted a lieux de memoire—a
site of memory deriving meaning from the landscape—that honored American
women’s contributions to the war while it facilitated their continued service work. 269
The ARC believed it would operate as a living memorial building because they
intended it to accommodate service activities inside its walls. With this new memorial
building, the ARC tried to embrace the concept of a memorial that could improve the
present and the future while it commemorated the past, although the WOSL would
later assert that it failed to accomplish that mission.
Fundraising efforts for this project argued that women’s contributions to the
war needed to be commemorated. A 1926 New York Tribune article urged readers to
donate through an appeal to include women in the pantheon of memory. The article
noted how “one of the aftermaths of war is the desire to express in stone, bronze or
marble the affection of the people for those who gave their lives for their country”
and asked “what of the women who loved and lost? What memorial rises to
commemorate their sacrifices?” 270 The new ARC memorial building would try to
ensure that American women would be commemorated.
269
Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” 7-24; Nora, ed. Rethinking France:
Les Lieux de Mémoire, Volume 1-3.
270
“Transcript of text of New York Tribune article from February 11, 1936 sent from Mabel Boardman
to Mr. Augustus K. Oliver,” p.1, Folder: 481.7, Box 429: Specifications for erection & completion of
world war memorial RG 200, NACP.
109
The other Allied combatants had already begun to honor women, and
Boardman called for the U.S. to follow their lead. 271 She described how Great Britain
had restored the Five Sisters Window in York Minster to commemorate the 583
women who died while serving Great Britain during the war. 272 A home for disabled
male soldiers had been created in Richmond, England as a living memorial to
women’s services, and a statue of the martyred nurse Edith Cavell had been erected in
London. 273 Canada laid the cornerstone for a Women’s War Memorial Building in
Ottawa, and in Florence, Italy, a monument to Italian mothers who lost their sons had
been unveiled at the Duomo. 274
Like these memorials in Europe and Canada, Boardman envisioned the
Memorial Building as “an expression in visual form of a great and tender gratitude to
our American mothers who gave their sons and to our women who, like the soldiers,
lost their lives in their country’s cause.” 275 To declare its eternal commemorative
purpose, the building would contain the following inscription to emphasize its
intended dual commemorative service mission (figure 2.10):
A Memorial built by the government and the People of the United States in
loving gratitude for the sacrifices and services of the Women of America in the
World War. That their labors to lessen suffering may be carried on, the Building
is dedicated to the Chapter Service of the American Red Cross. 276
271
This article was most likely published in the Red Cross Courier. Mabel T. Boardman, “American
Women’s War Memorial,” December 1926 Folder: 481.73 Memorials-Inscriptions, Box 428: 481.13
Main Building & Grounds-Alterations Rebuilding & Relocating, RG 200, NACP.
272
Ibid.
273
Ibid.
274
Ibid.
275
Ibid.
276
“Transcript of text of New York Tribune article…” pg. 2. This exact inscription could not be found
on the building today. However, a similarly worded inscription was found inside the front foyer above
the central door. It reads: “A living memorial given by the government and the people of the United
States in loving memory of the sacrifices and services of America’s heroic women in the World War
dedicated to the service of suffering humanity through the American Red Cross.” Fieldwork by the
author, 16 August 2013.
110
As the New York Tribune asserted, the memorial building would work “not only to
commemorate sacrifice and service, but to help carry on the type of service that is
commemorated…so that the humanitarian deeds of the Red Cross will themselves be
part of the Memorial.” 277 By trying to interweave service and commemoration, it was
hoped that the building would lessen the “suffering of mankind throughout the world
now and for the years to come” while it also honored American women.
278
Figure 2.10: Inscription in front foyer of the Memorial Building to the Women
of the World War, Washington D.C. Note that the wording of this inscription
differs slightly from what was originally planned. August 16, 2013.
Specifically, the Memorial Building commemorated the services and
sacrifices of American women during the war. Each of these terms encompassed the
multiple ways that women served or sacrificed so that any way that a woman
277
278
“Transcript of text of New York Tribune article…”pg. 2.
Ibid, 4.
111
contributed to the war could be included. A pamphlet that promoted the project
explained that the sacrifice category included not just the nurses who died during the
war but also “those other self-sacrificing women who died because of their war labors
at home and overseas” and “the heart-breaking sacrifices made by American women
who lost their sons or others dear to them for our country’s sake.” 279 The pamphlet
defined the service category as commemorating “all those who served faithfully,
loyally, and tirelessly for the Government” and organizations such as the Red Cross,
the YWCA, and the Salvation Army. 280 These broad categories recognized that
women aided the war effort within and beyond official military, government, and
civilian organizations. Women’s work on the home front received equal recognition,
as did the sacrifices made by women who lost their relatives and suffered personal
tragedies. Their hardships and patriotism were deemed just as important as those
made by the women who donned a uniform for overseas work or even men who
joined the military. The Memorial Building testified to the contributions of women to
the military long before they were officially able to enter all its branches. 281
The new memorial building needed government authorization to be
constructed since the government owned the Red Cross Headquarters property.
Authorized by the 71st Congress through Public Resolution No.39, S.J. 98 on March
4, 1927, the American National Red Cross received a $350,000 government
279
Undated pamphlet,” Folder: 481.7 World War Memorial General, Box 429, 481.7: Specifications
for erection & completion of world war memorial, RG 200, NACP.
280
Ibid.
281
At the start of WWI, women already served in the Army and Navy as uniformed nurses but they
lacked any official rank. On March 21, 1917 the Navy announced that women would officially be able
to join the Navy and Marine Corps as Yeoman (F). Ebbert and Hall, The First, the Few, the Forgotten:
Navy and Marine Corps Women in World War I, ix, 1.
112
appropriation to support construction, as long as they matched that sum through their
own fundraising efforts. 282 The resolution stated that the building would remain the
property of the U.S. Government but be administered by the ARC and would be used
by the District of Columbia Chapter of the ARC. 283
This provision enabled the ARC to try to devote the memorial building to
service activities and attempt to fulfill the utilitarian purpose for which they created it.
The District of Columbia Chapter intended to use the building as a model chapter
house where they would conduct research on service activities from which the
national organization could benefit. They planned to utilize the building as a place to
study problems and programs before they submitted their conclusions to chapters
nationwide. 284 Establishing this building as the Washington D.C. Chapter House gave
it a specific service mission that endeavored to fulfill its civic duty as a living
memorial by helping local ARC chapters aid their communities.
Blueprints of the building demarcated how each floor would be devoted to
specific service activities and demonstrated the breadth and diversity of the service
work that would occupy the building. The basement stored the practical necessities of
the ARC’s community service projects. It contained a room for cutting, assembling
and packing, rooms designated for the storage of emergency supplies, canteen
282
The plans for the building required approval from the CFA, the Director of Public Buildings and
Public Parks of the National Capital, the American National Red Cross Committee, the Secretary of
War, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Library, and the Chairman of the House
Committee on the Library. “Public Resolution No.39, S.J. 98,” Folder 481.7 World War Memorial
General, Box 429, 481.7:Specifications for erection & completion of World War memorial, RG 200,
NACP.
283
Ibid.
284
Ibid; Pamphlet about WOSL dedicating column, pg.1, Scrapbook of Toledo Unit kept by Julia
Norton. 84.150.1, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI Museum Archives,
Kansas City, Missouri.
113
supplies, a motor corps ambulance, and other materials, and a kitchen for canteen and
nutrition classes. 285 The rooms on the first floor focused on the major community
service research areas to be studied by the Washington D.C. Chapter. These included
rooms for hospital service, home service, home hygiene and care of the sick, the
Junior Red Cross, a braille room, a first aid classroom, and an office for the issuing of
receipts and supplies. The first floor also contained the staff office and the office of
the chairman and executive committee, located in a prominent position to the right of
the building’s main entryway. 286
A huge room that resembled a ballroom occupied the second and third floors
of the building. Interchangeably called the Hall of Service, the Service Hall, and the
Community Workroom, this large, formal open space was decorated with fluted
columns, pilasters, and the ARC emblem. It included a stage, above which hung a
stone sign carved with gold letters that read: “to commemorate service” (figures 2.11
and 12) 287 This sign reminded those who used the room that the building
commemorated women’s service work in the war and facilitated their continued
dedication to service activities. The Hall also included three small rooms that
different blueprints demarcated as either branch work rooms, branch classrooms, and
a room for the nursing committee and health aids, or for the production of garment
285
“First Floor Plan, Memorial Building to the Women of the World War,” Box: ARC Buildings and
Memorials, Civil War Memorial, Women of World War, DC Chapter, Old Georgetown Road,
Ballroom Open House 6/16/2006, ARC New National Headquarters, American Red Cross National
Headquarters Archive; Unlabeled blueprint, Folder: 481.7 D.C. Chapter House, Box 428, RG 200,
NACP.
286
Ibid.
287
This information was gathered by the author while on a tour of American Red Cross National
Headquarters on 16 August 2013.
114
supplies, a surgical dressing and cutting room, and a dressing room. 288 Thus, even the
most formal floor of the building contained spaces for the ARC to conduct specific
service work. The D.C. chapter also announced that they hoped to include facilities at
the building to support disaster relief and home services for disabled ex-service
men. 289
Figure 2.11: View from the balcony of the “Hall of Service” inside the
Memorial Building to the Women of the World War, Washington D.C.
288
“First Floor Plan, Memorial Building to the Women of the World War,” Box: ARC Buildings and
Memorials, Civil War Memorial, Women of World War, DC Chapter, Old Georgetown Road,
Ballroom Open House 6/16/2006, ARC New National Headquarters, American Red Cross National
Headquarters Archive; Unlabeled blueprint, Folder: 481.7 D.C. Chapter House, Box 428, RG 200,
NACP.
289
“Pamphlet about the Memorial Building (no date)”, Folder 481.7 World War Memorial General,
Box 429, 481.7 Specifications for erection & completion of world war memorial, RG 200, NACP.
115
Figure 2.12: Detail of the sign hanging above the stage in the “Hall of
Service” inside the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War,
Washington D.C. The inscription reads: “To Commemorate Service.” August
16, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
The realities of Jim Crow America required the ARC to consider segregation
in the building, especially because of its public purpose. Blueprints of the basement
show separate toilets specifically reserved for “male help” and “female help” which
were probably used as segregated bathrooms. 290 Segregation seems to have been
discussed quietly during the building’s planning phase. In a letter to the ARC
Chairman, Judge Payne, in March of 1926, Mr. James L. Fieser, the ARC vice
chairman, described the current plan for accommodating African-Americans at the
building. 291 He had learned from Boardman that “there is definite space for two
rooms assigned to negroes on the second floor. I question the wisdom of any notice of
290
ARC New National Headquarters, American Red Cross National Headquarters Archive; Unlabeled
blueprint, Folder: 481.7 D.C. Chapter House, Box 428, RG 200, NACP.
291
I learned of Fieser’s official title in the ARC from: Jones, viii.
116
segregation of this sort.” 292 Fieser did not suggest eliminating the plans for
segregation but implied that this policy should not be publicly advertised. He adhered
to common social practices and racial prejudices while he suggested the
inappropriateness of segregation at a living memorial building. 293 Perhaps Fieser saw
segregation as incompatible with the building’s service goals, or perhaps he merely
wanted to spare the building controversy either from a lack of segregation or a
backlash against it. Veteranist-commemorators were not immune to racial prejudice
nor could they ignore the realities of Jim Crow America.
The endorsement of several prominent public figures legitimized the
importance of the Memorial Building and its mission to continue women’s service
work with the ARC. Upon accepting the role of Honorary Chairman of the Memorial
Fund Committee, General John J. Pershing proclaimed that “no cause appears more
worthy than this effort to commemorate the services of our women.” 294 Pershing
highlighted women’s diverse wartime contributions, from mothers of soldiers to
nurses who served overseas. But Pershing also subscribed to contemporary gender
norms and lauded American women for their gentle, soothing natures which
comforted soldiers. 295 Pershing saw women as simultaneously brave and patriotic
while also nurturing and feminine, like the quasi-religious image of the ARC nurse
depicted as the “world’s greatest mother.” He also emphasized women’s postwar
service and highlighted how “even in this Memorial of services and sacrifices they
292
“Letter to Judge Payne from Mr. James L. Fieser,” Folder: Folder: 481.73 Memorials-Inscriptions,
Box 428, RG 200 1917-1934, NACP.
293
Julia Irwin notes that during WWI at least, the ARC had no national segregation policy in place and
allowed local chapters to conform to practices of segregation and discrimination. Irwin, 102.
294
Ibid.
295
Ibid.
117
seek to make it a means of inspiring future generations.” 296 He characterized
women’s commemorative efforts with this living memorial building as a national
service because it created a place for them to continue their wartime work. As the
former commander of the AEF and a national hero at the time, Pershing’s
endorsement established women as key players in the war effort and praised them as
civic leaders and model citizens committed to serving their communities.
The memorial campaign also received the support of Chief Justice and former
President William Howard Taft, a close friend of Boardman’s and an ARC supporter
who served at separate times as its chair and President. 297 Taft endorsed the project
and noted that “war memorials to the men are prominent throughout the country and
shall our people be less grateful to the women who labored at home, on the
battlefield, and in the hospitals with a patriotic devotion unexcelled and who, in
giving those they loved, made even a greater sacrifice?” 298 Taft believed a utilitarian
memorial was an appropriate choice because “the loyal and patriotic spirit of the
women to whom this Memorial is built will be forever perpetuated in the humane
work of the Red Cross.” 299 Taft also believed it was fitting to locate the building so
close to the government and military departments the ARC supported. This location
highlighted women’s impact on the government and the military during the war
through the building’s external memorial features, while the service work that took
place inside the building showcased women’s continued commitment to national
service.
296
Ibid.
Irwin, 49.
298
“Pamphlet about the Memorial Building (no date).”
299
Ibid.
297
118
Adding to the list of important public figures that supported the project, Rear
Admiral W.S. Benson, Chief of Naval Operations during the war, provided his
endorsement in 1923. 300 He described the ways that women supported the Navy, but
omitted how through creation of the Navy Yeoman (F) in 1917, the Navy and Marine
Corps were the first and only services to officially include women in their ranks,
albeit temporarily. 301 Benson focused more on women’s contributions that better fit
into the category of voluntary activities than military service and paid work,
suggesting that despite advancements such as the Yeoman (F) and the 19th
amendment, gender roles still precluded women from being recognized for their
military service.
Despite these strong endorsements, the project encountered voices of dissent
from those who questioned its appropriateness and necessity. The Rockefeller
Memorial, a charitable foundation that donated to the ARC’s Civil War Building,
expressed doubts about the project when Boardman asked for a donation. 302 Arthur
Wood, acting president of the Foundation, suspected that the project’s female leaders
were overly excited about their mission and might not have been thinking clearly
about whether such a building was actually needed, or if it was just a frivolous
amusement to keep the “good ladies” of the ARC occupied. By calling them “good
ladies,” Woods made gender a defining factor in his apprehension about making a
300
“Letter to Boardman from Rear Admiral W.S. Benson,” Folder: 481.7 World War Memorial General,
Box 429: 481.7 Specifications for erection & completion of World War Memorial, RG 200, NACP.
301
Ebbert and Hall, The Fist, the Few, the Forgotten; Godson, Serving Proudly: A History of Women
in the U.S. Navy.
302
Irwin, 35, 57-58.
119
donation and portrayed these women as amateurs who should not be trusted with such
a big project. 303
The project also encountered opposition from within the Red Cross. In 1925,
Marquis Eaton, a prominent full-time volunteer from the Chicago Chapter, sent
Boardman a heated letter that voiced his opposition to the project. He believed it was
an unnecessary expense that would be especially detrimental to local ARC chapters.
Eaton criticized the previous Civil War memorial building for being overly
extravagant. He told Boardman it was “primarily a monument to your own courage,
zeal, and wisdom.” 304 He feared that another memorial building would be a similarly
selfish enterprise and he seemed to doubt its proposed utilitarian service mission.
Eaton contended that if the national ARC solicited donations for this new memorial
building, philanthropists would be less willing to donate to struggling local ARC
chapters and to provide support to their service projects. 305
Boardman quickly responded to Eaton’s letter with a fierce defense of the new
Memorial Building. 306 To counter Eaton’s accusations that this living memorial
building intended to house service activities was unnecessarily extravagant, she
invoked ideas of patriotism and compared the situation to that of the Capitol Building.
“We might house Congress in a building that cost a fraction of what the capitol cost
in which they could have had as much space as they have in that building,” she
303
Letter from Arthur Woods to Hon. Eliot Wadsworth, July 24, 1923, Folder: 481.7 World War
Memorial General, Box No. 429, RG 200, NACP.
304
Letter from Marquis Eaton to Boardman June 9, 1925, Folder: 481.7 World War Memorial General,
Box 429, RG: 200, NACP.
305
Ibid.
306
Letter June 11, 1925 from Mabel Boardman to Marquis Eaton, p. 1, Folder: 481.7 World War
Memorial General, Box 429, RG 200, NACP.
120
quipped, “but I wonder if any patriotic United States citizen would like to see
Congress in a cheaply constructed building.” 307 Boardman saw frugality when
housing important national service organizations as unpatriotic. She also doubted that
the Memorial Building would really deflect significant amounts of money from local
chapters, especially since it housed projects aimed at supporting the service work of
these very same local chapters. 308
Boardman also defended the project because it commemorated the services of
women in the World War, something Eaton ignored in his criticism. She argued that
“many people have a feeling that they would like to show some appreciation for all
that the women suffered and all they have done during the war.” 309 Eaton’s
opposition demonstrated how Boardman had to justify a women’s memorial to those
who perhaps still did not believe women had earned a place in American military
memory. Although the service activities accommodated in the building were
supposed to form a vital of the project, this service mission and the women the
building commemorated sometimes became overshadowed by the controversies and
challenges commonly encountered by memorial projects.
The Architecture of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War
Built of white Vermont marble in the neo-classical tradition with Beaux-Arts
influences, the exterior of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War
307
Ibid.
Ibid.
309
Ibid, 2.
308
121
mirrored the aesthetics of turn-of the-century Washington D.C. civic architecture,
even as it held women’s service activities within its walls. This style mimicked
nearby buildings such as the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Memorial
Continental Hall and the Pan American Union Building. 310 This architectural choice
legitimized the Memorial Building and cemented its purpose into the city’s
landscape. 311
The successful architectural and landscape design of the World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and the flourishing of the City Beautiful movement
until around the 1920s, inspired American designers to seek a national urban aesthetic
that aimed for unity and beauty in buildings, green spaces, and city planning. 312 This
aesthetic included a new appreciation for classicism. Classicism had inspired
American designers and Washington D.C. architecture since the early republic, when
the aesthetics of Ancient Rome and Greece were deemed the most appropriate for the
new democratic American republic. 313 With the emergence of the American
Renaissance in the 1880s as the United States experienced imperial ambitions and a
310
The Pan American Union Building (1910), barely one block from the ARC Headquarters, is an
excellent example of a neoclassical-inspired beaux arts civic building. For a detailed analysis of the
neoclassical and beaux arts influences on architect Paul Cret’s design for the Pan American Union
Building see: Elizabeth Grossman, The Civic Architecture of Paul Cret (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996). 26-64. The Headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution at
Memorial Continental Hall (1905), located directly next to the ARC Headquarters is also an excellent
example of Beaux Arts neoclassicism. Daughters of the American Revolution, “About DAR: National
Headquarters Washington D.C.” National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution
<http://www.dar.org/natsociety/headquarters.cfm> (2 November 2013).
311
Virginia & Lee McAlester, A Field Guide to American Houses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996),
6-7, 378-383.
312
Tompkins, A Quest for Grandeur: Charles Moore and the Federal Triangle, viii-ix.
313
Livio Sacchi, “Jefferson & Co.: The Influence of the Italian Architectural Culture in Washington
D.C. and Virginia,” in The Italian Legacy in Washington D.C.: Architecture, Design, Art, and Culture,
edited by Luca Molinari and Andrea Canepari (Milano, Italy: Skira Editore, 2007), 25.
122
flowering of culture at home, classicism came into favor again as the European Beaux
Arts movement became popular. 314
In the midst of these turn of the century aesthetic trends, Washington D.C.
underwent an architectural transformation with the formation of the Senate Park
Commission tasked with expanding Pierre L’Enfant’s vision for the city. 315 Inspired
by the Columbian Exposition, the Commission created the McMillan plan to redevelop the city along the lines of L’Enfant’s original designs. 316 Several of the
Exposition’s designers, including Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., and
Charles McKim served on the Commission and infused the McMillian plan with
influences from the Columbian Exposition and the City Beautiful movement. This
resulted in the continued dominance of classicism in the city’s design, but with the
addition of parks, landscape features, and infrastructural improvements. 317 In 1910,
the success of the McMillan plan inspired Congress to create the Commission of Fine
Arts (CFA) to protect the plan’s careful vision for the city. 318
The designs of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World War, and
of the earlier Memorial to the Heroic Women of the Civil War, were directly
influenced by the City Beautiful Movement, the McMillan Plan, and the CFA. The
ARC Headquarters occupied a prime location near key elements of the city such as
314
Richard Guy Wilson, “American Renaissance: Charles McFollen McKim and the Aesthetic Ideal,”
in The National Mall: Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core, edited by Nathan Glazer and
Cynthia R. Field (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 32-33; Cynthia R. Field,
“When Dignity and Beauty Were the Order of the Day: The Contribution of Daniel H. Burnham,: in
The National Mall: Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core, 42-43.
315
Nathan Glazer, “Introduction,” in The National Mall: Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core,
1.
316
Tompkins, viii-ix.
317
Wilson, 35-36; Field, 48-49.
318
Tompkins, xvii.
123
the National Mall, the White House, and the emerging Federal Triangle. The site was
surrounded by similar neoclassical Beaux Arts buildings as well as the new First
Division Memorial, dedicated to that division’s World War One service. 319 Any
building on the site needed to fit into the surrounding aesthetics to assert its political
importance in relation to this powerful neighborhood and the rest of the downtown
area.
The prestigious New York architectural firm Trowbridge and Livingston
designed both of the ARC memorial buildings to embody the aesthetics of the newly
redesigned capital city. 320 Although known best for designing the Saint Regis Hotel
in New York, Trowbridge and Livingston also designed public buildings and they
often worked in the Beaux Arts and neo-Federal styles popular in the nation’s capital
at the time. 321
The exterior elements of the building typify neoclassical Beaux Arts public
buildings. Rectangular in shape with a flat roof, the building’s front façade faces
north on E Street and contains the main entrance, accessed by a staircase flanked on
each side by two memorial lamps (figures 2.1 and 2.13). 322 This staircase leads to a
narrow porch that runs almost the entire length of the façade and is adorned with
eight fluted columns topped with Ionic capitals, above which is engraved “In Memory
319
The creation of the Federal Triangle, not far from the ARC Headquarters, represented a concerted
effort to incorporate the ideals of the City Beautiful movement into new federal buildings in D.C.
Examples include the Department of Commerce Building and the Ariel Arios Building. See:
Tompkins, A Quest for Grandeur: Charles Moore and the Federal Triangle.
320
Adolf F. Placzek, MacMillan Encyclopedia of Architects (London, UK: The Free Press, 1982), 228230.
321
Ibid. Partner Breck Trowbridge studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris in addition to founding
and serving twice as President of the Society of Beaux-Arts Architects in New York
322
McAlester, 378-379.
124
of the Heroic Women of the World War.” 323 A balustrade above the inscription also
runs the length of the porch. The fenestration of the front facade composes eight
windows on the lower level and nine windows on the upper level. The sides of the
building each contain basement entrances below a decorative four-columned porch
and include the Red Cross symbol above their northernmost window, although it is
unclear if these Red Cross decorations were originally part of the building (figure
2.14). 324 The rear façade, which faces south, features just eight decorative pilasters
that go from the second to the third story (figure 2.15).
Figure 2.13: Detail, front façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of
the World War, Washington D.C. May 31, 2013. Photograph by Allison S.
Finkelstein.
323
324
McAlester, 180-185; field work by the author 31 May 2013.
“Guided Tour of American Red Cross National Headquarters.”
125
Figure 2.14: East façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World
War, Washington D.C. August 16, 2013. Photograph by Allison S.
Finkelstein.
Figure 2.15: South (back) façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of
the World War with the Jane Delano Memorial in the foreground, Washington
126
The placement of the World War Building behind the Civil War Building on
E Street, and its more simplistic design compared to the Civil War building,
established a hierarchy of memorial buildings at the headquarters complex, with the
Civil War Building taking the highest place. 325 Symbolically, this indicated that
although the ARC believed the World War and women’s roles in it to be important
enough to include in their commemorative compound, they did not intend for the
World War to take precedence over the memory of the Civil War. They constructed
the World War Building both literally and figuratively in the shadow of the Civil War
Building, an appropriate physical representation of the way that the female memorymakers of World War One followed in the footsteps of the women who
commemorated the Civil War. While the Civil War building housed the ARC
headquarters and offices, the new World War building took the utilitarian service
aspect of living memorial buildings one step further by using it as a space for more
practical, hands-on service work. Built only thirteen years apart by some of the same
leaders, including Boardman, the World War building continued the ARC’s efforts to
commemorate women at their headquarters through service buildings, a choice that
enabled them to establish a facility for women’s work in the nation’s capital. 326
The exterior of the World War Building served a dual memorial purpose as it
included individual memorials, a feature not included on the Civil War Building.
325
For a discussion of how hierarchies of memorials are used in a cultural landscape see: Grossman,
119-143; 119.
326
For studies of women’s commemorations of the Civil War see the following: Silber, The Romance
of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900; Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of
the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture; Mills and Simpson, eds., Monuments to
the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory; Janney, Burying the Dead But
Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations & the Lost Cause.
127
Known for imaginatively using architectural details, Trowbridge and Livingston
suggested that the columns on various parts of the new building’s exterior and interior
be dedicated to specific groups and individuals by engraving their names on the bases
(figures 2.16 and 2.17). 327 All but one of the columns on the building’s front and side
facades received such special dedications. These columns enabled the memorial fund
to acquire more revenue to support the construction of the building and its service
mission, since the committee required a monetary donation to dedicate a column. The
columns each became a memorial and transformed the building’s exterior into a
multi-layered commemorative structure that served as the epicenter of the
commemoration of women’s contributions to the war and created a home for
women’s continued service work. 328
327
Mabel Boardman, “The Columns,” Red Cross Courier, 1 February 1928, Folder: 481.73
Memorials-Inscriptions, Box 428, RG 200, NACP; “Trowbridge and Livingston.”
328
Two interior columns also served as memorials.
128
Figure 2.16: Front foyer with the interior memorial columns and a portrait of
Jane Delano. Memorial Building to the Women of the World War,
Washington D.C. August 16, 2013. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 2.17: Detail of the column dedicated to the women of the YMCA and
YWCA, east façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the World
War, Washington D.C. The inscription reads: “To the Women with the
Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A.” August 16, 2013. Photograph by Allison S.
Finkelstein.
129
The diversity of the column dedications demonstrated the range of ways that
women aided the war effort and reflected a cross-section of American society.
Organizations featured on columns included the women of the YMCA, the YWCA,
the Catholic War Council, the Jewish Welfare Board, and the Women’s Committee of
the Council of National Defense, to name just a few (see figure 2.17). 329 These
columns represented the only inclusion of anything religious in the building. Local
tributes were popular and included a column given by the men of Houston, Texas, to
commemorate the women of their city, a column dedicated to the women of the
model workroom of the New York County Chapter of the ARC, and a column
dedicated to the women of the District of Columbia Chapter of the ARC who ran
building’s service projects. 330 Also represented were the Grey Ladies, nurses at
Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington D.C. 331
As with most commemorations of women during the Great War, motherhood
formed a prominent theme in the memorial, an appropriate choice for an organization
advertised during the war as “The World’s Greatest Mother.” 332 The American
Legion purchased a column in tribute to the American mothers who lost sons in the
war, demonstrating their approval of the building. 333 By singling out mothers as
worthy of commemoration, the American Legion helped to legitimize their losses as
national sacrifices and supported a new iteration of republican motherhood that
revered American mothers for bearing sons for military service.
329
Boardman, “The Columns.”
Ibid.
331
Pamphlet about WOSL dedicating column, Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National
WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri., pg. 2.
332
Wartime propaganda posters depicted the ARC as “The World’s Greatest Mother.” Irwin 86.
333
Boardman, “The Columns.”
330
130
The mother of John Boyd Wolverton, an only son killed in the war, used her
son’s insurance money to dedicate a column on his behalf in honor of American
women. 334 As opposed to keeping the insurance money for herself, she donated this
column and used the money to honor her son’s memory, her sister American women,
and to fund the service work housed in the structure. Because the column she
dedicated was a type of physical memorial, her donation did not completely eschew
traditional memorialization trends; it represented a compromise between creating a
permanent physical memorial to her son and American women, and her desire to help
fund the creation of this living memorial building that would facilitate women’s
service.
Mabel Boardman even received a column in her honor that inscribed her
service to the Red Cross and the Memorial Building into its very stones. 335
Additionally, the two lamps that flanked the front staircase were dedicated to
Boardman by the National Committee on Red Cross Volunteer Service (figure 2.18).
The inscription on these memorial lamps noted that they were intended to “carry on
the light of her service for the sick and wounded of war and for those who suffer from
disasters.” 336 For better or worse, these lamps embodied the building’s mission in the
persona and achievements of Mabel Boardman, the individual in charge of the project
and its most public face. By placing these lamps at the building’s entrance, Boardman
received a memorial deification that cemented her contentious status in the ARC and
her personal devotion to service into the Memorial Building.
334
Ibid.
Ibid.
336
Fieldwork by the author, 31 May 2013.
335
131
Figure 2.18: Memorial lamp dedicated to Mabel Boardman located on the
eastern end of the front façade of the Memorial Building to the Women of the
World War, Washington D.C. May 31, 2013. Photograph by Allison S.
Finkelstein.
The addition of these individualized memorial columns and lamps established
the World War Building as a platform for memorialization, a lieux de mémoire that
included individual memorials as part of a collective attempt to create a living
memorial building that contained spaces dedicated to women’s work. The building
constituted a multi-faceted and multi-purpose monument that consolidated what
might otherwise have been geographically scattered individual memorials onto one
site devoted to service projects. These individual tributes mimicked the popular
custom of engraving the names of World War casualties on memorials. Although the
Memorial Building as a whole eschewed the individuality of the casualty lists
popularly inscribed on many contemporary memorials dedicated to specific units or
regions, the columns and lamps included an option for those who wanted to join the
132
collective spirit and service mission of the building, but still wanted to specifically
honor an individual or a group.
The column dedications represented a visible halfway point between
traditional statuary memorialization and veteranist-commemorations. The funds
raised through the donation of these individual memorial columns supported the
creation of the building and facilitated its service mission, transforming the donation
of these aesthetically conservative columns into a philanthropic act. These columns
exemplified how the ARC’s attempt to create a living memorial building devoted to
service enabled the organization to avoid making a total commitment to pure
veteranist-commemorations.
With these compromises, the ARC tried to redefine the parameters of
commemoration in interwar America. The ARC attempted to demonstrate that
permanent physical memorials could co-exist and be combined with more ephemeral
acts of service. They argued that memorial buildings could be aesthetically pleasing
and also incorporate important service work within their walls. Through their
innovative memorial columns, the ARC contended that architectural elements of
memorial buildings could be singled out as individual memorials that honored
individuals as part of a collective memorial structure. They professed that donating to
a living memorial building could be considered an act of service since the donations
enabled the building’s construction and facilitated the service projects that would take
place inside. Through this endeavor, the ARC blurred the boundaries that separated
service projects from statues and tried to show how they could be combined to create
a lasting, meaningful, beneficial, and even beautiful memorial. By centralizing and
133
consolidating these memorials to women onto one site in the nation’s capital, the
organizers of the building made a deliberate choice. They intended to convey to the
nearby government officials the importance of women’s wartime contributions and
their continued national service. 337 Despite their intentions, all female veteranistcommemorators did not agree with them, and some viewed the project’s attempted
compromise as a failure.
The Blank Column and the Women’s Overseas Service League
Although many organizations and individuals embraced the idea of the column
dedications, one important women’s organization, the Women’s Overseas Service
League (WOSL). When initially approached with the opportunity to donate money to
dedicate a column, the WOSL sent a pamphlet to its members that described the offer
and the $5,000 likely needed to pay for the column, and action that generated great
debate within the League. 338 In June 1923, National President Louise Wells wrote to
Boardman, herself a WOSL member, to explain why the WOSL decided not to
donate a column yet. Wells had listened to the WOSL chapters’ opinions on the offer
and learned that:
There was overwhelming sentiment to the effect that for the present at
least our best memorial to the dead would be our service to the living.
The San Francisco Unit, backed up by others from California have
brought us a most challenging appeal to help in caring for the many
disabled ex-service women on the Pacific Coast and elsewhere. 339
337
Wingate, “Doughboys, Art Worlds, and Identities: Sculpted Memories of World War I in the United
States” and Wingate, Sculpting Doughboys: Memory, Gender, and Taste in America’s World War I
Memorials.
338
Pamphlet about WOSL dedicating column, pg.1.
339
“Letter from Louise Wells to Mabel Boardman,” Folder: 481.73 Memorials-Inscriptions, Box428:
481.13 Main Building & Grounds-Alterations Rebuilding & Relocating, RG 200, NACP.
134
The WOSL believed that the best way to commemorate the war was through direct
service to its survivors. Even though the project was led by a WOSL member and
would take the form of a living memorial building that housed ARC service activities,
that was not enough for the League since too much money was needed for its
construction. This money could have been channeled directly into service activities
that made a more immediate impact on those who needed help. Wells noted that this
decision did not preclude future involvement with the project and was only for the
present time. 340
The issue came up again four years later during the 1927 WOSL National
Convention. During the convention, the WOSL passed a resolution that more
formally declined Boardman’s standing invitation for WOSL to participate in the
Memorial Building. 341 The WOSL publicly declared their gratitude to the ARC and
tried to maintain friendly ties with them, since many WOSL members had served
with the ARC during the war and many of the project’s leaders such as Boardman and
Lucy Minnigerode were WOSL members. 342 The issue finally came to a head in
February 1929 when WOSL National President Lena Hitchcock responded to yet
another invitation from Boardman. This time, Boardman offered an indoor column
dedicated to the WOSL women who died overseas, and once again the WOSL
340
Ibid.
NARA II Box: RG 200 National Archives Gift Collection Records of the American National Red
Cross1917-1934 481.13 Main Building & Grounds-Alterations Rebuilding & Relocating 481.7 D.C.
Chapter House Box No. 428 Folder: 481.73 Memorials-Inscriptions.
342
Boardman and Minnigerode’s names appear in several membership rosters of the WOSL. Box
1922-1932 and Box: 1933-1939, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On Periodical
341
135
declined. 343 Hitchcock cited organizational restraints that prevented the League from
raising money from local units to pay for the column. 344 The WOSL National
Treasury barely had sufficient funds to cover their regular business needs, save
money for the organization’s disabled women, and help care for the women in the
Soldiers’ Home at Danville, Illinois, where they had started a new occupational
therapy program for the female residents to sell handicrafts to help support
themselves. 345 As discussed in chapter one, these service projects aimed at helping
female veterans formed the core of the WOSL’s mission. With such expenses,
Hitchcock did not have the funds to purchase the column, nor could she raise the dues
that WOSL members paid to the national organization. 346
In 1929, as in 1923 and 1927, the WOSL still considered its most important
function to be service activities that helped former overseas women. Because the
Memorial Building commemorated many women who were WOSL members,
Hitchcock again emphasized their gratitude. She explained that they were not
“inappreciative of your kindness and genuine interest in the League in giving us this
opportunity. As it is, I feel that our own service work will have to be the only
memorial which will ever be erected to these women. 347 Eager to maintain good
relations with her sisters at the ARC, Hitchcock insinuated that both organizations
had the same goal of commemorating women’s wartime service but were
approaching it from different angles. The WOSL Washington D.C. unit even sent ten
343
“Letter to Mabel Boardman from Lena Hitchcock,” Folder: 481.73 Memorials-Inscriptions, Box
428, 481.13 Main Building & Grounds-Alterations Rebuilding & Relocating, RG 200, NACP.
344
Ibid.
345
Ibid.
346
Ibid.
347
Ibid.
136
members to the building’s cornerstone dedication ceremony and many WOSL
members attended the building’s 1930 dedication. Carry On featured a lengthy article
about the building’s dedication ceremony that thanked Boardman for giving them
“the opportunity of having a share in this ‘living memorial.’” 348 Although they
respected the building’s mission, the WOSL considered direct service towards
veterans to be the only memorial they needed to commemorate women’s roles in the
war, while the ARC believed in their attempt to compromise with a living memorial
building that housed service activities. By the end of the 1920s, the WOSL supported
an almost entirely service-based approach to commemoration that contrasted with the
ARC’s endeavor to compromise between veteranist-commemorations and statuary
memorials.
These diverging opinions about the best way to commemorate women’s
service in the First World War exemplified the ongoing debate during the interwar
period about the proper form of commemoration, even among female veteranistcommemorators. The WOSL valued pure service over any type of physical memorial;
although the memorial building housed service activities, they could not be convinced
to spare funds from their own service projects to support a plan that did not directly
aid veterans. By combining elements of traditional monuments with a building that
lodged service activities, the ARC tried to compromise between the different
memorial options being debated by Americans. The overlapping membership of the
WOSL and the ARC demonstrated how even women who belonged to the same
348
Carry On Vol. VII, No. 3, Aug 1928, pg. 30; Carry On Vol. IX, No. 2, May 1930, pg. 7-8, MS 22,
Box 37, The Women’s Overseas Service League Records, University of Texas at San Antonio
Libraries Special Collections.
137
organizations and pursed veteranist-commemorations disagreed about the best way to
conduct their work. This highlights the complicated layers of discourse as American
women reshaped commemorations and shows how there was no definitive end to
traditional memorials, just an overall reconfiguring of commemoration.
As one of the premier organizations that represented women who served
overseas in the war, the WOSL’s refusal to participate left the Memorial Building
somewhat incomplete and indicated that some female veteranist-commemorators
deemed its compromise to be unsuccessful. Indeed, the southernmost column on the
building’s west façade remains blank today, perhaps intended to be used as the
WOSL column (figure 2.19). Although the ARC’s compromise appeased many
factions, Boardman’s continued attempts to gain the WOSL’s support signified that
their refusal to participate represented a failure of the ARC’s planning committee.
Although the building did house service activities for many years, especially during
the Second World War, perhaps Louise Wells and Lena Hitchcock were right and the
building did not focus enough on service work. 349 Today, the building’s service
mission has been almost lost and forgotten; it is filled with ARC administrative
offices instead of rooms devoted to community service projects and research. In 1953,
the District of Columbia Chapter vacated the structure and moved to a new office
nearby on E Street, divorcing the building from its original service purpose. 350 The
349
Minutes of the Twenty-Fifth Biennial Council of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of
America, “Report on the Collections of Uniforms of Women Worn During the Great War, 1914-1918,”
60; Folder: NSCDA Report; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History
Division.
350
“American Red Cross Headquarters Designated Historical Landmark,” June 15, 1966, pg. 2, Folder:
“ARC Buildings-Civil War Memorial,” Box: ARC Buildings and Memorials, American Red Cross
National Headquarters Archive, Washington D.C.
138
memorial building is best known now for the Clara Barton Café located in its
basement where ARC workers and others eat lunch, oblivious to the building’s rich
history and its nearly abandoned service purpose.
Figure 2.19: Detail of the blank column, west façade of the Memorial
Building to the Women of the World War, Washington D.C. August 16, 2013.
The blank column may also indicate that some female veteranistcommemorators, like many WOSL leaders, almost fully rejected the idea of
traditional memorials in the aftermath of an untraditional war that altered humanity in
unthinkably violent ways. Still facing the reality of the women and men whose lives
were irrevocably damaged by the new mechanized warfare, some members of the
WOSL might have seen physical memorials of any kind to be useless. Even though
living memorial buildings housed service activities, they still required vast
construction funds that could have been used directly for service. Aesthetically, the
139
Memorial Building represented a very traditional neo-classical architectural style, and
no component of the building was more traditional than its columns. Perhaps the
WOSL leadership felt that such a traditional architectural component could not
embody the memory of a war that killed and maimed so many people in new and
horrible ways.
As the world reeled from the devastation of the war, some artists, especially
in Europe, lashed out against traditional aesthetics and created art that reflected the
destruction of the Great War. 351 Composed of many rank and file women who served
overseas, many WOSL members had come face to face with the realities of the
battlefields. After witnessing these scenes, perhaps some WOSL women, like some
artists, could no longer use traditional aesthetic forms to commemorate the war, but
saw tangible service and an attempt at healing as the only meaningful and productive
ways to honor those who did not survive and those who still suffered.
Yet other WOSL women like Boardman and the ARC members who
supported the Delano statue still clung to aspects of traditional commemorations even
as they pursed and supported veteranist-commemorations, often through the WOSL
as members. 352 The disagreement and debate that occurred among the WOSL’s
351
For a description of the war’s influence on art see Chapter 6 in Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of
Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History.
352
Although Boardman did travel to France and Italy in 1918, it is not likely that she witnessed the
horrors of the war to the same extent of the rank and file ARC workers closer to the battle lines.
Although she described sensing the horrors of war upon her arrival in France, her letters to her mother
from Europe described her activities as focused on inspection tours, meetings, and social events with
other prominent Americans helping in Europe. She only occasionally left Paris and Rome and did not
venture anywhere near the embattled areas of either country. Irwin, 137. Box 8, Mabel Thorp
Boardman Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Mabel Thorp
Boardman Collection, Letters from Mabel Boardman to her Mother April 9, 1918-May 9, 1918,
American Red Cross Historical Biography, Boardman, Mabel: Miscellaneous Material, American
Women’s War Relief 1914, American National Red Cross Headquarters Archive, Washington D.C.
140
members demonstrates the messy and impartial cultural transformation of
commemoration after the First World War. It further substantiates one scholar’s
assertion that dichotomizing the cultural history of the First World War as either
traditional or modern is no longer useful, for “the overlap of languages and
approaches between the old and new, the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’, the
conservative and the iconoclastic, was apparent both during and after the war.” 353
Such an overlap between the old and the new, and between service and statue,
occurred amongst the intersecting membership of the WOSL and the ARC as they
tried to balance commemoration with carrying on their wartime service. As a result,
the ARC’s attempted living memorial building could not please all female veteranistcommemorators, and some, like the WOSL, deemed the project a failure, while others
praised its endeavor to forge a middle-ground.
Conclusion: Presenting the Building to the Public
The ceremony for the laying of the building’s cornerstone, held on May 31, 1928,
represented a milestone moment in the campaign to construct the Memorial Building.
The Marine Band played to a crowd of over one thousand people as President Calvin
Coolidge spread the first trowel of mortar for the building’s cornerstone. 354 Chief
Justice and former President Taft acted as the ceremony’s presiding officer and
Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis accepted the building on behalf of the nation. 355
With an eye toward history and posterity, a time-capsule box was placed in the
353
Winter, 3, 2-5.
“Cornerstone Laid for Women’s World War Memorial,” Folder: 481.73 Laying of Cornerstone
Dedication Ceremony General Correspondence, Box 429, RG 200, NACP.
355
Ibid.
354
141
cornerstone and filled with memorabilia associated with the ARC, the ceremony, and
the organizations in which women participated during the war. 356
At the building’s completion ceremony on March 19, 1930, General Pershing
presented the building to President Herbert Hoover, who accepted it on behalf of the
nation along with First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, a WOSL member. The day was
spent unveiling the various memorial columns and lamps that adorned the building
(figures 2.20, 2.21, 2.22). 357 Each dedication at these individual monuments added to
the sense that the building served as the physical and aesthetic focal point of the
commemoration of American women’s roles in the Great War.
Figure 2.20: President Herbert Hoover and First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, a
WOSL member, lay a wreath at the dedication of the Memorial Building to
the Women of the World War, 1930. RG 200, NACP.
356
“List of Articles to go in Corner Stone box of Red Cross Memorial Building to the Women of the
World War,” Folder: 481.73 Laying of Cornerstone Dedication Ceremony, Box 429, RG 200 19171934, NACP.
357
“Press release March 19, 1930: President Hoover Accepts World War Memorial to Women from
General Pershing,” Folder: 481.73 Laying of Cornerstone Dedication Ceremony, Box 429, RG 200,
NACP; “Press release March 15, 1930: Memorial to Women of World War to be Dedicated
Wednesday,” pg.1, Folder: 481.73 Laying of Cornerstone Dedication Ceremony, Box 429, RG 200,
NACP.
142
Figure 2.21: “Unveiling Am. Legion Column World War Memorial (E Street
Building).” 1930. General Pershing is on the left side of the column with ARC
nurses behind him. RG 200, NACP.
Figure 2.22: Unveiling the columns dedicated to the YMCA, YWCA, and
Knights of Columbus, 1930. RG 200, NACP.
143
The architecture of the Memorial Building transformed it into a multipurpose
living memorial. Reading this building with an eye to its multiple uses demonstrates
the creativity of its designers, Trowbridge and Livingston Architects, and the ARC.
Rather than limit themselves to one type of memorial such as a column, statue, or
living memorial building, the architects combined elements of traditional monuments
with utilitarian memorials to create a structure that contained layers of meaning and
symbolism. The building took inspiration from the memorial buildings begun just
before the World War such as the Memorial to the Heroic Women of the Civil War
and brought the idea to full fruition by specifically designating spaces for service
work in the building’s floorplans. By continuing the ARC’s foray into living
memorials, the new World War building demonstrated that many women in the ARC
believed their hybrid service memorial to be an appropriate way to commemorate
women’s wartime contributions. But because the building did not focus enough on
direct service, other veteranist-commemorators, especially many members of the
WOSL, deemed this compromise a failure and did not agree with the ARC that the
project produced an effective living memorial building.
The Memorial Building’s attempt to facilitate women’s service work
continued the custom of women’s Progressive era activities, and tried to prevent
commemoration from completely overshadowing the world’s needs in the wake of
the Great War, even if some women did not think it succeeded in doing so. It
endeavored to ensure that the legacy of American women’s wartime services and
sacrifices would stand in the nation’s capital as a powerful reminder of what women
had done for the nation. So close to the White House and the State, War, and Navy
144
Building, such a reminder was needed as newly enfranchised women looked for novel
ways to serve their country and fulfill the duties of citizenship. For American mothers
in particular, their inclusion in the Memorial Building justified their assertion that
they had served the nation as ‘war mothers’ of service members while they created
their own niche for national service based on that belief.
145
Chapter 3: “Let Us Take Up the Torch Individually and
Collectively”: The American War Mothers and VeteranistCommemorations
In 1935 or 1936, a headline in a Mobile, Alabama, area newspaper resurrected the
memory of the First World War by highlighting the mothers of the men who fought in
the war. The headline read: “U.S. Doughboys Did the Fighting But Mothers Really
Won the War, Says Soldier Who Came Back.” 358 The article covered a recent event
in Mobile’s Lyons Park when the Mobile chapter of the American War Mothers
planted a live-oak tree to commemorate their children who served in the First World
War. At the ceremony, Mobile’s mayor, Cecil F. Bates, a veteran of the war himself,
praised American mothers for their wartime service. He exclaimed that “it was the
heroic mother who furnished the inspiration and really won the war—it was the
thought of them that encouraged and strengthened our soldiers.” 359 As opposed to
idealizing battle or his fellow veterans, Bates honored American mothers, a wise
choice in the 1930s when the First World War was a source of disillusionment and
still under public scrutiny.
This public celebration of the services and sacrifices of American mothers
during World War One, and the organization’s act of community service in planting a
358
“U.S. Doughboys Did the Fighting But Mothers Really Won the War, Says Soldier Who Came
Back,” n.d., no newspaper name, in: Scrapbook “History of American War Mothers From Oct 1933 to
September 1935. Assembled by National Historian Mrs. J.E. Wilcox of Bancroft, Kansas.” No folder,
no box, American War Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s
Memorial Foundation Collection.
359
Ibid.
146
memorial tree to beautify this park, epitomized the veteranist-commemoration
mission of the American War Mothers (AWM). Founded in 1917 to unite mothers of
service members in support of the war effort, after the war, the AWM embraced
veteranist-commemorations. Because the American War Mothers asserted that they
had served the nation during the war, their approach to commemoration emphasized
the importance of continuing that service in the postwar era. They believed that their
roles as mothers required them to focus their commemorative efforts on serving the
nation by helping veterans and other war mothers, rather than only building
monuments. The AWM embraced the platform of veteranist-commemorations
promoted by other women’s groups such as the WOSL and the American Red Cross
who also navigated the contentious interwar commemorative culture. As the AWM
pursued veteranist-commemorations and helped to pioneer a new form of
memorialization, they grappled with race, the peace movement, and the economic
struggles of the Great Depression.
A Brief History of the American War Mothers
Alice Moore French organized the American War Mothers during the First World
War (figure 3.1). After her only child, Donald, left to serve in the war in 1917, she
responded to the request of the Indiana section of appointees to the U.S. Food
Administration for the mother of an Indiana soldier to help collect signatures for a
147
Food Pledge Campaign. 360 A widow active in women’s clubs and civic life, Mrs.
French used her new position to form the Indiana War Mothers, an organization she
created to unite mothers of service members in support of the war effort and as
advocates for their children’s welfare. 361 The Indiana War Mothers completed their
constitution in April 1918, and in the fall of that year they wrote a national
constitution that expanded their Indiana organization into the national American War
Mothers. 362 Article VII of this national constitution defined their group as a “nonpolitical” organization that would not “promote the candidacy of any person seeking
public office.” 363 This clause helped them try to remain apolitical and inclusive of
members so that their work would benefit the military and veterans and not one
particular political party. 364
360
Elizabeth Cafer du Plessis, “Alice French, Indiana War Mothers: From World War I “Kitchen
Soldiers” to Postwar Immigrant Reformers,” 99-118; 101-102.
361
Ibid, 102-103.
362
Ibid, 107.
363
“Constitution and By-Laws, American War Mothers, Amended September 23, 1929,” 5, in
“American War Mothers First Annual Report Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Acceptance of Act of
Incorporation 1925,” 6, American War Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P.
Bleckler, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
364
du Plessis, 106-109.
148
Figure 3.1: “1918-1921, Mrs. Alice French, Founder, Indianapolis, Indiana.”
American War Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler,
Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial
Foundation.
Incorporated by Congress on February 24, 1925, the American War Mothers
evolved into a patriotic association focused on supporting veterans and
commemorating the war. 365 Similar in its structure to the WOSL, the AWM consisted
of national, state, and local chapters with the national level and its officers presiding
over the other chapters. 366 The AWM held a national convention every two years and
published a magazine titled “The American War Mother” that they sent free to dues
paying members. 367 Committees at the national and lower levels of the organization
included: the legislative committee, the hospitalization committee, the
Americanization Committee, the Memory Tree Committee, the Gold Star Committee,
365
Pamphlet “Indiana Chapter of American War Mothers,” title page, Folder: American War Mothers
1951 Constitution & By-Laws, “ “ “ Indiana Chapter, C. 1951, Box: A-78, 76.268, American War
Mothers Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
366
“Constitution and By-Laws, American War Mothers, Amended September 23, 1929,” 7.
367
Ibid, 11, 23-24.
149
the Welfare Committee, the Emblem and Memorial Markers Committee, the Child
Welfare Committee, and the American War Mothers Memorial Home Committee, to
name a few. 368
Even though they attempted to remain apolitical, the AWM involved
themselves in the contemporary debates over immigration, Americanization, the
peace movement, and disarmament. They considered themselves to be partners with
the American Legion, whose platforms of Americanization, and opposition to the
recognition of Soviet Russia they supported (figure 3.2). 369 Although members did
not always agree with each other, overall, the organization especially supported
Americanization—the movement to acculturate immigrants to American customs—
and efforts to promote world peace. 370 In particular, founder Alice French
championed internationalism, supported the establishment of a “World Court” to
prevent future conflicts, and became outspoken about her support for the peace
movement. 371 She hoped that the AWM could help “find a way whereby our national
and international differences would be settled other than by the blood of our precious
sons.” 372 French advocated for peace for the rest of her life and incorporated support
for peace into the AWM.
368
Ibid, 3, 12.
“Three Objectives for Indiana War Mothers,” unlabeled newspaper, Folder 8: AWM Indiana
Chapter Scrapbook 1921-26, M458, Box 1, Alice Moore French Papers, Indiana Historical Society.
370
du Plessis, 113-116.
371
Ibid, 116.
372
“History of American War Mothers,” pg. 22, Folder: 7: History of American War Mothers, M458,
Box: 1, Alice Moore French Papers, Indiana Historical Society.
369
150
Figure 3.2: Back cover of “The Indianan,” Volume I, Number 10, July 1921. The
caption aligns the AWM with the American Legion and its auxiliary. Papers of John
J. Pershing. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
After the Armistice, the AWM shifted their focus from supporting the war
effort to supporting veterans; they recognized that their organization could still play
an important role in the nation. At the 1923 national convention, National President
Mrs. H.H. McCluer reminded the organization that members had come “to this
convention to help mold the future. And the boys and the friends who are gone, we
know they see us this morning assembled to carry on what they have given us.” 373
McCluer believed that the AWM had a duty to carry on their wartime work by
supporting veterans and honoring their children’s wartime service.
373
“National American War Mothers Fourth Annual Convention, Kansas City, Missouri October, 1-4,
1923,” 2-3; no folder; no box; WIMSA.
151
The AWM’s Constitution delineated their mission of community service and
patriotic support of the nation, its armed forces, and veterans. It declared that their
mission was to:
keep alive and develop the spirit that prompted world service; to maintain the
ties of fellowship of that service and to assist and further any patriotic work;
to inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the State, and Nation; to work
for the welfare of the Army and Navy; to assist in any way in their power men
and women who served and were wounded or incapacitated in the World War;
to foster and promote friendship and understanding between American and the
Allies in the World War. 374
In addition to outlining their program of service to the nation, advocacy for veterans,
and the fostering of good relations with the former Allies, this mission statement also
indicated the commemorative aspects of these objectives. In starting this statement
with the objective of keeping alive and developing “the spirit that prompted world
service” and maintaining “the ties of fellowship” that developed during the World
War, the AWM directly connected their mission to commemoration. Although they
did not use the words commemoration or memorialization, these phrases indicated
that they intended to memorialize the war through their projects.
The AWM constitution also explained the organization’s membership
requirements. Members had to be female citizens of the United States with a son or
daughter of their own blood who served in the Army or Navy of the U.S. or its allies
during the Great War between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918, and received
an honorable discharge or were still in the service. 375 By limiting members to blood
374
“Constitution and By-Laws, American War Mothers, Amended September 23, 1929,” 5.
“Constitution and By-Laws, American War Mothers, Amended September 23, 1929,” 6. Mothers of
children who did not serve during the dates of official American participation were also excluded from
becoming members even though mothers of such volunteers who served during the time of U.S.
involvement were allowed.
375
152
mothers, the AWM restricted stepmothers and adoptive mothers from membership
and privileged birth mothers as the only true war mothers. In keeping with their belief
in Americanization, the exclusion of non-citizen mothers prevented many immigrant
mothers from joining. This kept the organization dominated by middle and upperclass Christian mothers. It is also significant that a child’s dishonorable discharge
prevented their mother from becoming a member; this demonstrated that children had
to conform to the military’s definition of honorable service for their mother to join.
The AWM did recognize that women had served in the war, and allowed mothers of
daughters who met the requirements to become members, signifying that the AWM
valued women’s military service as equal to that of men, at least for the purposes of
becoming a member.
When it came to race, the AWM did not view African-American mothers as
equal to white mothers. Some African-American women were eventually allowed to
join the organization, but only in separate, segregated “colored chapters,” although
the AWM Constitution did not mention segregation. 376 The issue of whether to
include African-American war mothers emerged early in the organization’s postwar
existence at the 1921 convention. 377 During an open discussion at the convention, an
unnamed delegate asked President Alice French whether “a colored woman is eligible
to become a war mother. We had colored boys in the war. It has been asked me, and I
wondered if they would be allowed in, or if they would have a chapter of their
376
“Proceedings Tenth National Convention American War Mothers September 30-October 3, 1935,
Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, D.C.,” 82, no box, no folder, WIMSA.
377
“Transcript of Proceedings: Second Biennial Convention of American War Mothers, 1921,”118119.
153
own?”378 This question touched on the central issue of how some Americans,
especially minorities, viewed wartime military service as a way to attain full
citizenship rights.
This issue sparked a heated debate at the convention as more members spoke
up and revealed their differing views on the admission of African-American
members. Mrs. Longbotham from Sacramento announced that her chapter had two
black women as members, after which Mrs. Huffman, most likely from Kentucky,
voiced her opposition to that policy. 379 Mrs. Huffman reminded the group how she
had previously taken a message to the Washington convention that stated how they
should use the term “white war mothers” in their Constitution.380 She had urged that
convention to:
let the colored war mothers have a chapter of their own, and they voted down
my motion. And of course, we do not want them in the same organization, but
you people can, unless you have your own State by-laws,--You can refuse the
colored mothers, or you can admit them, if you want them in. That is part of
our constitution. 381
Although she failed to officially inscribe segregation into the AWM constitution, by
disagreeing with the chapters who welcomed African-American members, Mrs.
Huffman still tried to deny African-American mothers the same opportunities as
white war mothers. Mrs. Digney, the incoming national president from White Plains,
378
Ibid, 118.
Ibid, 118. “Yearbook 1925-1927, Kentucky Chapter American War Mothers,”3, Kentucky
Historical Society Digital Collections,
<http://www.kyhistory.com/cdm/compoundobject/collection/RB/id/2754/rec/3> (31 Jul 2014). This
document lists a Mrs. Huffman as the Kentucky Chapter’s Fourth Vice President from 1926-1927 and
as a member of the Constitution Committee for the Convention, indicating this is likely the same Mrs.
Huffman.
380
“Transcript of Proceedings: Second Biennial Convention of American War Mothers, 1921,” 118119.
381
Ibid, 118.
379
154
New York, agreed that at the Washington Convention it had been accepted that each
state would be “governed by its own conditions, and we tabled the discussion of that
question.” 382 In doing so, the AWM avoided a difficult and divisive decision. They
allowed each state’s chapters to be directed by local racial conditions, which
presumably meant that chapters in the Jim Crow south were segregated, if any
African-American chapters formed in those states at all.
Dissatisfied with this situation, some members rekindled the debate and
protested that by excluding African-Americans, the AWM denied them their status as
American citizens. Mrs. Murray exclaimed that “I don’t think we should exclude
them. The Government accepted the black soldiers, but they should be permitted to
organize in their own way. But I don’t think we should draw the line. I don’t think it
is a secular organization; it is a patriotic organization, and we should take every
mother that has sent a boy.” 383 Mrs. Donald added how her chapter also had AfricanAmerican members and noted that “they don’t conflict with us at all,” although they
had never actually affiliated with the AWM, but still considered themselves
members. 384 Sensing the tensions created by this discussion, Mrs. Norton from
Sacramento asked the Convention “to please not discuss this question. Our colored
mothers gave as we gave. We have gold star mothers among them. Let each state care
for its own people. We Sacramento War Mothers are not afraid to stand upon our feet
382
Ibid, 119; Program “Dedication of Memory Trees,” Folder: 1460-50-80-50 Memorial Trees 8/1925
to 3/1932,
Box 67, RG 79: Records of the National Park Service, National Capital Region, Subject Files, 19241951, NACP.
383
“Transcript of Proceedings: Second Biennial Convention of American War Mothers, 1921,” 119.
384
Ibid, 119.
155
and say that we welcome the colored mother of any American man who served.” 385
Even though she lauded her own chapter’s inclusion of African-American mothers,
Mrs. Norton, like many of the other women that spoke up, did not advocate for this to
become a national policy. She wanted to table the issue since she thought it divided
the convention and distracted members from their mission; she was progressive, but
not enough to persuade others to treat African-American mothers equally. Taking her
cue, President French explained that someone had suggested that they have a question
box available for attendees to submit questions about “knotty problems” rather than
asking them on the floor and sidetracking the convention’s proceedings. The
conservative decision to leave the choice to include African-American mothers to the
individual units maintained the status quo and sanctioned segregation. This decision
to table the issue of segregation, and the discussion surrounding it, demonstrated how
female memory-makers did not always agree, even as they pursued the same goals
within the same organization.
It seems that by handling the issue in this way, some African-American
women were allowed to join the AWM and form their own segregated chapters. At
least two segregated AWM chapters are known to have existed: the Lincoln Chapter
in Washington D.C., and the Colonel Charles Young Chapter in Chicago, named for
the third African-American graduate of the United States Military Academy and the
first African-American officer to become a Colonel. 386 The proceedings of the 1935
385
Ibid.
“Army-Navy Union Groups Give Ball,” The Washington Post, 26 May 1935, pg. ST8, ProQuest
Historical Newspapers; Bertie L. Roberts, “Quincy Club Pays Honor To Officers” The Chicago
Defender, 27 Aug 1938, pg. 17, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “Chas. Young War Mothers Fete
Friends” The Chicago Defender, 26 Oct 26 1940, pg. 4, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “Gold Star
Mothers Given Unique Reminiscent Tea,” The Chicago Defender, 16 Oct 1937, pg. 15, ProQuest
386
156
convention in Washington D.C. recorded the attendance of Mrs. Louise A. Pinckney
from Washington D.C.’s Lincoln Chapter. She addressed the convention and invited
all the attendees to a banquet hosted by her chapter the next night in honor of past and
present state and national presidents and “visiting colored delegates.” 387 Held at the
Whitelaw Hotel, the convention headquarters for the African-American members who
were segregated from the main convention’s headquarters at the Wardman Park
Hotel, this banquet featured as its guest speaker the Special Assistant to the Secretary
of War, Dr. Emmett J. Scott, a well-known African-American leader. 388 It also
featured national president Mrs. Ochiltree and state president Mrs. Mary T.
Shanahan. 389 This announcement indicated that African-American women gained
some inclusion in the national conventions and that the Washington D.C. chapter was
large enough to host a major banquet.
The African-American members of the AWM did not let the segregation of
this convention’s headquarters go unprotested. To highlight the racism at the
Historical Newspapers; George Franklin Proctor, “An Old Lady (Dedicated to Col. Charles Young
Chapter American War Mothers)”The Chicago Defender, 12 Mar 1938, pg. 16, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers; “War Mothers Receive Reports on Convention,” The Washington Post, 12 Nov1933, pg.
F9, ProQuest Historical Newspapers. COL Young became a famous figure at the turn of the century
and it is widely believed that discrimination prevented him from being sent to France during WWI.
Jeffrey T. Sammons and John H. Morrow, Jr., Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted
369th Regiment & the African American Quest for Equality (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of
Kansas, 2014).
387
“Proceedings Tenth National Convention, American War Mothers September 30-October 3, 1935
Wardman Park Hotel Washington, D.C.,” pg. 82, unlabeled box, American War Mothers National
Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
388
In 1919, Scott published Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War. He also
served for eighteen years as the private secretary to Booker T. Washington. Emmett J. Scott, Scott’s
Official History of the American Negro in the World War (Chicago: Homewood Press, 1919); <
https://archive.org/details/scottsofficialhi00scot> (3 February 2015).
389
Ibid; “War Mothers Detail Events Of Conclave,” The Washington Post, 22 Sep 1935, pg. G8,
ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “War Mothers Announce Features for Convention,” The Washington
Post, 15 Sep 1935, pg. ST6, ProQuest Historical Newspapers
“War Mothers Announce Features for Convention,” The Washington Post, 15 Sep 1935, pg. ST6,
ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
157
convention, The Baltimore African-American published a photograph of four
members of the Colonel Charles Young Chapter who were refused admission to the
general convention banquet at the Wardman Park Hotel with the caption: “Their Sons
Died, but They Were Turned Down,” (figure 3.3). 390 The segregation of the banquet
caused an outcry among the African-American convention delegates and members. In
response, the African-American delegates did not invite the white delegates to their
memorial services at Colonel Charles Young’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery.
When they learned of this, white delegates were reported to have “expressed regret
that they were not notified.” 391 The African-American delegates also brought the
incident to the attention of the AWM’s leadership. The Chicago Defender reported
that the members of the Colonel Charles Young Chapter discussed the convention’s
segregation at their next meeting and received assurance from state officials that
“such an un-American action would not occur again.” 392 By protesting their unfair
treatment at the convention, these African-American women asserted their desire for
equal treatment by their white colleagues and refused to accept the status quo that
limited their participation in the conference.
390
“Their Sons Died, but They Were Turned Down,” Baltimore Afro-American, 12 Oct 1935, pg. 5,
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
391
“Gold Star Mother Pays Respect lo Deceased Heroes,” The Baltimore Afro-American, 12 Oct 1935,
pg. 4, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
392
“American War Mothers,” The Chicago Defender, 21 Dec 1935, pg. 7, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers.
158
Figure 3.3: Photograph of the African-American members of the AWM segregated
from the 1935 National Convention in Washington D.C. and denied admittance to the
Wardman Park Hotel. The photograph was titled: “Their Sons Died, but They Were
Turned Down,” Baltimore Afro-American, 12 Oct 1935, pg. 5. ProQuest Historical
Newspapers.
African-American convention delegates further exposed the disagreements
among white AWM members regarding segregation. While some white members
refused to grant African-American members the opportunity to participate fully in the
convention, other white members recognized this choice as “un-American;” they
hoped to prevent such treatment in the future and they even wanted to honor an
African-American war hero alongside the segregated chapters. While the AfricanAmerican delegates protested their treatment at the convention, they also recognized
the opportunities the AWM gave them that other organizations did not. As a 1934
article in The Baltimore Afro-American reported the year before the convention
159
incident took place, the American Gold Star Mothers organization did not include any
African-American members. In an interview for this article, Mrs. Louise Pinkney
noted how the AWM included African-American members in separate “colored
chapters” and commented that “the colored groups receive every courtesy and
attention accorded the whites. They have participated in all the affairs of the national
organization, both national and local.” 393 She added that an African-American
member from her own chapter “was the fifth in line to place a wreath on the
Unknown Soldier’s grave at Arlington on Mother’s Day” and that Mrs. George
Seibold, the white founder of the American Gold Star Mothers, “always invited the
members of the Lincoln chapter to attend its affairs.” According to Mrs. Pinckney, the
current president of that group had not yet invited these African-American women to
an event, an indication that she might not have been as liberal as her predecessor. 394
This situation typified the discord within the AWM and the larger community of
female veteranist-commemorators about race: some chapters allowed AfricanAmerican members, while others did not, but tolerated how the national organization
allowed them to form segregated chapters. In fact, Alice French actually granted a
charter to an AWM chapter composed of Native American women at Fort Yates,
North Dakota, another hint that the organization’s racial policies varied widely. 395
The AWM’s struggle to define their racial policies indicated an increasing
awareness of race among female veteranist-commemorators, even though the AWM
393
“Jim Crow Revealed in Group of War Mothers,” The Baltimore Afro-American, 2 Jun 1934, pg. 20,
ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
394
Ibid.
395
“Scrapbook,” Folder 10: Scrapbook, handwritten with photographs and clippings, M458, Box: 1,
Alice Moore French Papers, Indiana Historical Society.
160
ultimately adhered to the strictures of segregation. Similar to other women’s service
organizations in the interwar period such as the WOSL, the American Red Cross, and
the YWCA, the AWM could not ignore racial issues. 396 The dissenting opinions
about race within the AWM, and their open arguments about segregation,
demonstrated that although they were bound together by some aspects of the same
mission, female veteranist-commemorators subscribed to a variety of different beliefs
and attitudes, and often disagreed about the best way to execute their mission.
Motherhood as Wartime Service
The AWM pursued veteranist-commemorations because they defined their roles as
mothers of military members as a form of wartime service and they believed it was
their duty to continue that service after the war. Veteranist-commemorations provided
the organization with a way to honor their children’s wartime contributions and
continue to support military members and especially veterans. It enabled the AWM to
create more space for women’s continued assistance to the armed forces and to act as
civic leaders in their communities.
The ideology of “republican motherhood” and contemporary cultural
conceptions of motherhood were central to the mission of the AWM and informed
their belief that as mothers they had contributed to the war effort. From the time of
the early republic, American women had been encouraged to support the nation
through “republican motherhood” by raising their children to become patriotic
396
During the interwar era, the YWCA struggled with how to include African-American women in
their organization as some of their white members began to question segregation. See: Robertson,
Christian Sisterhood, Race Relations, and the YWCA, 1906-46. See also: Whalan, The Great War and
the Culture of the New Negro.
161
American citizens and sending their sons to the military. 397 In this way, women could
contribute to the nation while they remained in the domestic sphere. 398 During the
First World War, republican motherhood played a large role in American women’s
contributions to the war effort, as well as the public’s perception of their
participation. The mother became a symbol of American patriotism, especially as
depicted in the imagery discussed in chapter two, such as the American Red Cross
propaganda posters that featured the “world’s greatest mother.” 399 Many women
asserted that a mother’s domestic role raising her children and running her home
played an essential role in society, and that mothers had special qualities that made
them well suited to reform work. 400 One scholar asserted that the AWM’s acceptance
of this idea:
allowed for the mobilization of women's labor without fundamentally
challenging conventional gender roles. The War Mothers did not endorse
controversial issues such as woman suffrage, protective labor legislation, or
mothers' pensions. In fact, French repeatedly insisted throughout the war that
they were not interested in politics, they were simply mothers looking out for
their sons. 401
During the postwar era, the AWM continued to embrace this conception of
motherhood while they attempted to remain politically neutral.
397
Lisa M. Budreau, Bodies of War: World War I and the Politics of Commemoration in America,
1919-1933 (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 183-184. For more on republican
motherhood see: Plant, Mom, 56-58; Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology
in Revolutionary America.
398
For more on motherhood as a form of service to the nation see: Plant, Mom, 56-62. For an in-depth
analysis of the Gold Star Pilgrimages in the context of motherhood and maternalism see: Rebecca Jo
Plant, “The Gold Star Mothers Pilgrimages: Patriotic Maternalists and Their Critics in Interwar
America” in Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare, and Social Policy in the Twentieth
Century, eds. Marian van der Klein, Rebecca Jo Plant, Nicole Sanders, and Lori R. Weintrob (New
York: Bergham Books, 2012).
399
Irwin, 86.
400
du Plessis, 103, 101-106; Gordon, 55; Ladd-Taylor, 3-4
401
du Plessis, 101-106, 104.
162
Unlike auxiliary organizations such as the American Legion Auxiliary and the
Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary, the AWM did not consider their organization to
be an auxiliary organization based on their familial association with members of the
military. They based their organization on their members’ own wartime service. Like
the members of the WOSL and the women honored by the Memorial to the Women
of the World War, the AWM believed they had served and sacrificed during the war.
In 1934, President Ochiltree reminisced about the war and opined that “the success of
this struggle of our people was greatly forwarded by the help of the Mothers who, in
united effort, stood firm for conservation of resources and for the necessary
economies and sacrifices that won the World War.”402 Referring to the AWM’s
origins in Indiana’s food conservation efforts, President Ochiltree reminded members
that their contributions to the war constituted a form of wartime service.
People outside of the organization agreed with the AWM’s definition of their
activities as wartime service. At the 1921 convention in Sacramento, the opening
speaker, General J.J. Borree, the Adjutant General of California, praised the AWM
for their important wartime contributions. 403 He told the AWM that:
to you belong the credit of many victories won, you who so freely gave your
loved ones to humanity’s cause. It is true that the sorrows and sacrifices of
mothers for a Nation are soon forgotten, and are little known by it. Men earn
glory and distinction, but the thousand watchful nights and sacrifices by which
a mother develops a hero are soon forgotten. No one counts for the mothers,
themselves, did not count. The strength of an army is judged by its morale, by
the morale of the individual soldier. This morale was carefully nourished and
strengthened by the many years when the loving restraint and guidance of
mothers instilled discipline and strength of character. The mother is, to the
Army, what she is to the Nation, in her resting the divine duty of guiding and
teaching her child so he may grow to manhood, a God-fearing, self-governed,
402
“Meeting of National Executive Board of American War Mothers, Auditorium Hotel in Chicago,
Illinois September 7th, 8th, & 9th, 1934,”13, WIMSA.
403
“Transcript of Proceedings: Second Biennial Convention of American War Mothers, 1921,” 6-7.
163
law abiding citizen. You, the mothers, have rendered a splendid service; with
your sacrifices you brought victory to our armies and peace to a war-torn
world. This was indeed a sacrifice… 404
By invoking the importance of motherhood, General Borree defined a mother’s role
in raising her children and sending them to the military as a service to the nation, one
that he viewed as partially responsible for the Allied victory.
The next speaker, Bishop William Hall Morland, agreed with Borree’s praise
for the wartime services of American mothers and urged them to turn their postwar
energies towards pursuing peace. 405 His visit to the battle-scarred Western Front
convinced him that war must never be allowed to happen again. 406 He believed the
AWM could play an important role in the pursuit of world peace and recovery from
the war. He entreated them to help peace come “out of destruction” and then to work
for justice for “those boys who have come back, broken or maimed or gassed or weak
or diseased or blinded or crippled or unemployed,--that they should receive
immediate attention and relief.” 407 Bishop Morland understood that mothers’ service
did not end with Armistice because they had the continuing responsibility of caring
for the veterans who returned. As the traditional caregivers in society, mothers were
in a unique position to pursue peace since they continued to deal with the physical
and mental wounds of war through their children.
The veteranist-commemorations pursued by the AWM honored the martial
contributions of war mothers alongside the military. At the 1921 convention, speaker
Mr. S.J. Lubin reminded the AWM of the importance of commemorating their own
404
Ibid, 6-7.
Ibid, 7-8.
406
Ibid, 8.
407
Ibid, 9.
405
164
wartime service. 408 He told the convention how “sometimes it is more difficult to live
than to die” and that “the final burden of war is not carried by the soldiers, but, rather,
by the parents, who, through struggle and loving sacrifice, raises the soldier for far
different end and purpose.” 409 Although he admitted that fathers also suffered, he
believed that because fathers had other interests to distract them, they suffered less
than mothers. 410 He told the audience that “the mother, in the very beginning, makes
the greatest sacrifice, which is typical of the larger service she renders throughout her
son’s life, to the end. Therefore, it is fitting that we pay reverence, not alone, to the
soldier, but to the war mother as well.” 411 Mothers deserved to be commemorated just
as much as soldiers, for they bore the “final burden” of the war. As an organization,
the AWM shouldered this burden collectively and believed it was their postwar duty
as mothers to support America’s veterans.
Service Towards Veterans
Helping veterans formed the foundation of the AWM’s mission of veteranistcommemoration. As ‘mothers of the nation,’ members considered themselves to be
mothers not just of their own children, but to all veterans and members of the
military. Each level of the organization prioritized service to veterans as one of their
most important activities.
Although the AWM focused on service as their main form of memorialization,
this did not mean that they rejected all forms of more traditional commemoration
408
Ibid, 19-20.
Ibid, 20.
410
Ibid.
411
Ibid.
409
165
such as monuments, memorials, and ceremonies. People and traditions do not change
overnight, and female veteranist-commemorators often augmented their service work
with other activities. For example, the AWM held annual Mother’s Day ceremonies at
the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, participated in Armistice Day ceremonies, issued
a commemorative stamp in 1934, and some local chapters even built statuary
memorials (figures 3.4 and 3.5). 412 However, the organization as a whole did not
create a national, permanent statuary memorial to commemorate the war.
412
“Invitation to the American War Mothers Twelfth Annual Mother’s Day Services, 1936” and
“Program of the American War Mothers Thirteenth Annual Mother’s Day Services, 1937,” Folder:
American War Mothers, Box 14, General Correspondence, Papers of John J. Pershing, Library of
Congress; Pamphlet “The American War Mothers Present Seventh Annual Mother’s Day
Ceremonies,” Folder: 1460-50-80-50 Memorial Trees 8/1925 to 3/1932, 1931; Box 67, RG 79 Records
of the National Park Service, National Capital Region, Subject Files, 1924-1951, NACP; “Meeting of
National Executive Board of American War Mothers Auditorium Hotel in Chicago, Illinois September
7th, 8th, & 9th, 1934,”pg. 18-29, American War Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of
Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection; “History of American War Mothers
From Oct 1933 to September 1935. Assembled by National Historian Mrs. J.E. Wilcox of Bancroft,
Kansas;” WIMSA. Examples of some memorials erected by individual AWM chapters include: the
Inter-City American War Mothers Memorial outside of Kansas City, Missouri and a memorial to those
from Marshall County, Indiana killed in the war, located the Buck cemetery. The Philadelphia Chapter
of the AWM erected a memorial intended to be titled “The American War Mother and Her Sons” in
Philadelphia, PA. James J. Heiman, Voices in Bronze and Stone: Kansas City’s World War I
Monuments and Memorials (Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Star Books, 2013), 61; “War Mothers
Ass’n Breaks Ground for Soldier Memorial,” unlabeled news clipping, and “War Mothers Make Gift
to Marshall County,” 31, May 1923, Folder 8: AWM Indiana Chapter Scrapbook 1921-26, M458, Box
1, Alice Moore French Papers, Indiana Historical Society; “Proposed Monument to Be Erected by the
Philadelphia Chapter in honor of those who served and died in the World War,” Box: 14, General
Correspondence, The Papers of John J. Pershing, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; “Great
War Monument, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-World War I Memorials and Monuments on
Waymarking.com” Waymarking.com, Nov. 22, 2006 <
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMZE2_Great_War_Monument_Philadelphia_Pennsylvania
> (14 Mar 2015).
166
Figure 3.4: Image of a member of the AWM placing a wreath at Tomb of Unknown
Soldier, 1937. The woman is probably National President Mrs. Boone. American War
Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s
Figure 3.5: A photograph of AWM National President Mrs. Ochiltree raising the flag
on the roof of the U.S. Capitol on Armistice Day in 1934. American War Mothers
National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s Memorial
Foundation Collection. Courtesy of the Women’s Memorial Foundation.
167
The AWM justified their decision to pursue veteranist-commemorations over a
national monument by connecting their service mission to the memory of the
American service members buried overseas. Alice French reminded the 1923
convention that their mission actually began during the war when members of the
AWM supported the men in the armed forces “just as mothers would.” 413 After her
1921 trip abroad when she visited the overseas cemeteries and later saw the flag
draped caskets that held the bodies of American dead who awaited repatriation, she
came to believe that the AWM now had a duty to honor the dead by assisting those
who survived and promoting peace. 414 She felt “that those boys who are resting under
the sod of France are here. There isn’t any end and they, you know, can be counted
on. They can count on we Mothers also every time.” 415 She made an emotional appeal
to the convention to listen to these “boys” for:
Ever since the Armistice was signed we have been looking for an
individual to pick up the torch. We have picked this one, we have picked
that one. Each time a new leader has come on the scene we have thought:
“That is the person now,” but you know I believe, Mothers, the boys were
talking to us. Let us take up the torch individually and collectively…Now
I believe the boys are here. I believe they are speaking. I believe they are
counting on you, Mothers, to pick up the torch. We rocked these boys to
sleep and I believe we should help them to rest in their last resting place.
They say, “We shall not sleep if you do not take up the torch.” 416
French believed that these dead bodies had power and voices that they used to speak
to the living. They urged her and the AWM to memorialize their lives by dedicating
413
“Fourth Annual Convention National American War Mothers October 1-4, 1923 Kansas City,
Missouri, Hotel Muhleback,” 26, no folder, no box, WIMSA.
414
“History of American War Mothers,” pg. 22-24, Folder: 7: History of American War Mothers,
M458, Box: 1 Alice Moore French Papers, Indiana Historical Society.
415
“Fourth Annual Convention National American War Mothers October 1-4, 1923 Kansas City,
Missouri, Hotel Muhleback,” 26.
416
Ibid.
168
their organization’s postwar mission to veteranist-commemorations. 417 The AWM
heeded the call of these soldier dead and devoted themselves to serving veterans
through service projects conducted by the local and national levels of the
organization.
State and local chapters pursued a variety of large and small projects to
support veterans. The 1928 yearbook of the Kansas City Chapter proclaimed that six
of the thirteen activities that the chapter supported in 1928 helped veterans; a total of
ten of their activities involved some form of community service. 418 These activities
included the sale of carnations to support hospital relief and entertainment programs,
projects that brought Christmas cheer to hospitals, and activities that aided soldier’s
loan funds. 419 In 1936, Indiana’s Clinton County Chapter adopted two hospitalized
ex-service men and provided them with gifts, sent fruit baskets to ill veterans at
Christmas, delivered groceries and blankets to the widow and children of a deceased
service member, and mailed books and magazines to the Soldiers Home at
Lafayette. 420
At the national level, the oranization’s National Hospitalization Committee
advocated for and supported veterans’ hospitals, soldiers’ homes, and other
institutions.421 The Prison Committee helped ex-service men and women in prison by
providing them with care packages, writing them letters and holiday cards, and
417
Ibid 25-26.
“Kansas City Chapter American War Mothers Yearbook 1928” 3, no folder, Box: 2004.100,
American War Mothers Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
419
Ibid.
420
“Indiana” in the Scrapbook: “American War Mothers History, September 1935 to September 1937,
Corabelle G. Francis, Historian, Kansas Section,” WIMSA.
421
“Proceedings of the 5th Bi-ennial convention (7th national convention) of the American War
Mothers”, 168-175, WIMSA.
418
169
helping with their rehabilitation. 422 Many of these prisoners were in jail because they
were the “victims of the drug habit.” 423 The National Legislative Committee, along
with the state legislative committees, supported and lobbied for bills in Congress that
affected the welfare of veterans and disabled veterans. 424 In 1923, the national AWM
formally endorsed the Bonus which would provide retroactive payment to World War
veterans in 1945, an issue that became contentious with the economic collapse of the
Great Depression. 425 Their initial support of the Bonus demonstrated the AWM’s
dedication to political advocacy on behalf of veterans.
One of the biggest and most well-known national service initiatives the AWM
conducted to aid veterans was the annual sale of carnations each May just before
Mother’s Day. 426 The AWM sold carnations because it was their national flower and
symbolized their organization. It also mirrored the VFW’s “Buddy Poppy” program
and the British Legion’s “Poppy Appeal.” 427 Veterans and families of World War
One veterans made paper carnations and the proceeds from their sale funded welfare
422
Ibid, 129-133.
Ibid, 130.
424
Ibid, 135-140.
425
“War Mothers in Favor of Bonus,” Waco City Times Herald, October 3, 1923, no folder, Box:
2004.100, American War Mothers Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City,
Missouri.
426
Many pages of the AWM scrapbook recording the organization’s activities from 1935 to 1937
include new clippings of articles published in local newspapers about local chapter’s carnations sales.
“Carnations Made by Vets,” n.d., no author or newspaper, taped in: Scrapbook: “American War
Mothers History, September 1935 to September 1937, Corabelle G. Francis, Historian, Kansas
Section,” WIMSA.
427
“Constitution and By-Laws, American War Mothers, Amended September 23, 1929,”14, in
“American War Mothers First Annual Report Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Acceptance of Act of
Incorporation 1925,”
WIMSA; The British Legion, “About the Poppy Appeal: History of the Poppy Appeal,” Poppy Appeal,
n.d. <http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/get-involved/poppy-appeal/about-the-poppy-appeal> (31 Jul
2014); Veterans of Foreign Wars, “Buddy Poppy,” Buddy Poppy, n.d.
<http://www.vfw.org/Community/Buddy-Poppy/> (31 Jul 2014).
423
170
work for needy veterans and their families. 428 An annual success, the carnation sale
gained national recognition. In Washington D.C., the AWM sold carnations at the
American Red Cross Headquarters, the site of the Memorial Building to the Women
of the World. 429 The campaign even received official endorsements from President
Calvin Coolidge and General Pershing in 1924; Pershing continued his support of the
project for many years. 430
The AWM achieved two goals by combining commemoration with
community service in the carnation campaign. First, they honored and commemorated
service members, their families, and war mothers. One newspaper described the
carnation campaign as having the “double significance of tribute to the mothers of the
country and the possible means with which to provide comfort and pleasure to the
heroes of this country in the persons of disabled ex-service men.” 431 Second, the
AWM supported needy veterans and their families through their traditional roles as
caregivers. Another article detailed how the funds raised from the sale would help the
428
Letter to Heads of Services and Offices of American Red Cross National Headquarters from
Executive Vice-Chairman, May 5 1943, Folder 610. American War Mothers, Box 935, RG 200
National Archives Gift Collection
Records of the American National Red Cross, NACP.
429
Ibid; Letter to All Service Heads from the Vice Chairman in Charge of Domestic Operations, May
9, 1934, Folder: 041. American War Mothers, Box 44, RG 200 National Archives Gift Collection,
Records of the American National Red Cross, NACP. The AWM sold carnations at the Red Cross
Headquarters in 1934, 1943, and probably throughout the 1930s.
430
Letter from Coolidge to Mrs. H.H. McCluer, March 4, 1924, Folder: American War Mothers, Box
14, General Correspondence, Papers of John J. Pershing, Library of Congress; Letter from Pershing to
Mrs. H. H. McCluer, April 14, 1924, Folder: American War Mothers, Box 14, General
Correspondence, Papers of John J. Pershing, Library of Congress.
431
“Carnations Made by Vets,” n.d., no author or newspaper, taped in: Scrapbook: “American War
Mothers History, September 1935 to September 1937, Corabelle G. Francis, Historian, Kansas
Section,” WIMSA.
171
families of needy veterans by providing coal, bedding, food, and shoes for their
children, which would help these children remain in school. 432 It explained that the
carnations, many of which are made by disabled vets, are a symbol. They are
even more than that. They are a means of preserving and fostering the
courage, self-respect and faith of many men, who, in giving the best of
themselves for the sake of their country, are unable now to give the best they
wish they could to their families. 433
As mothers, the AWM recognized that helping only veterans was not enough and
that veterans’ families also needed support. They understood that the wounds of war
affected entire families and that they could honor veterans by helping them as well as
their loved ones.
During the Great Depression, the AWM’s support for veterans became even
more important, and even though it often became more difficult, the AWM did their
best to continue aiding veterans. At the AWM executive board meeting in September
1933, President Virgil Stone discussed a proposal to increase the cost of dues to
finance the creation of a relief fund for the national headquarters in Washington
D.C. 434 She admitted that many people objected to the increase, but she defended its
necessity since it would help the men and women who came to the headquarters to
seek help. 435 The VFW and the American Legion even sent destitute veterans to the
headquarters, and President Stone wanted every chapter to contribute to the fund so
they could provide relief to these veterans, some of who may have arrived as part of
432
“War Mothers Plan Sale of Carnations” n.d., no author or newspaper, taped in: Scrapbook:
“American War Mothers History, September 1935 to September 1937 Corabelle G. Francis, Historian,
Kansas Section,” WIMSA.
433
Ibid.
434
“Meetings of the Executive Board of the American War Mothers, Claypool Hotel Indianapolis,
September 22-23, 1933,”4-8, no folder, no box, WIMSA.
435
Ibid, 4-5.
172
the 1932 or 1933 Bonus Marches. 436 After the war, the AWM had established such a
strong reputation for helping veterans that many people assumed the AWM to be the
best place to go for help.
To illustrate the seriousness of the situation. Mrs. Stone spoke about one of
the veterans who came to the headquarters at the behest of the VFW and needed to be
hospitalized. 437 When he arrived, he told them that: “I was weary, hungry, cold and
discouraged, and I saw the sign on the door, ‘American War Mothers,’ and I said to
myself, ‘I will find a friend in here.’” 438 Stone and her colleagues helped him as much
as they could, and although they could not get him into a hospital, they gave him
clothes. Mrs. Stone told the executive board that “Mrs. Huntington and Mrs. Faries
and I are known as beggars. I want you to know that, that some of your National
Officers are known in Washington as beggars.” 439 Unable to provide clothes for this
veteran, Mrs. Stone and her colleagues presumably resorted to begging to acquire
clothes for him. The AWM did not let the difficulties of the Great Depression derail
their dedication to providing immediate, tangible relief to needy veterans.
The American War Mothers Memorial Home
The AWM physically demonstrated their commitment to veteranist-commemorations
with their successful creation and support of a memorial home to lodge female
436
Ibid, 4-5.
Ibid 5.
438
Ibid, 5.
439
Ibid, 6.
437
173
visitors of the patients at Fitzsimons Veterans Hospital. 440 Located nine miles from
Denver, Colorado, Fitzsimons Veterans Hospital was a memorial building named in
honor of Lieutenant W.T. Fitzsimons, the first American officer said to die in the
war. 441 Even though it was one of the largest veterans’ hospitals with almost 3,000
patients and extensive facilities, it’s hard to reach location made it expensive and
difficult for mothers and wives to visit patients and find suitable and affordable
accommodations. 442 The AWM decided to establish a home near the hospital “where
these visiting mothers and wives could have a pleasant home like place to stop while
there and at a very modest price, and if they did not have the price, might make their
visit any way.” 443 The home served veterans and their female relatives who needed
assistance with their trips; these women could stay at the home for a nominal fee or
for free (figure 3.6 and 3.7). 444
440
“American War Mothers First Annual Report Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Acceptance of Act of
Incorporation 1925,” Memorial Home section, WIMSA.
441
Carry On, VOL V. No. 3, August 1926, pg. 17, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry
On Periodical Collection, Gift of Carolyn Habgood, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection
(WIMSA).
442
Memorial Home section, “American War Mothers First Annual Report Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Acceptance of Act of Incorporation 1925,” WIMSA.
443
Ibid.
444
Carry On, VOL V. No. 3 August 1926, pg. 17, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry
On Periodical Collection, Gift of Carolyn Habgood, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection
(WIMSA).
174
Figure 3.6: The American War Mothers Memorial Home in Aurora, CO. American
War Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s
Figure 3.7: Reverse side of the flier “Wear a Carnation.” Papers of John J. Pershing.
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
175
The AWM created and ran the home entirely on their own as a major national
service project. In 1925, they created a corporation organized under Colorado law
called “the War Mothers National Memorial Home Association,” of which shares of
$100 were sold only to members and chapters of the AWM. 445 This corporation
purchased five acres of land adjacent to the hospital and construction work began
even while fundraising continued. 446 In October 1925, the craftsman style home was
completed, and the corporation granted the AWM a twenty year lease on the building
without any rent payments. 447 The AWM then formed a committee to oversee the
operation of the home, called the “Home Operating Committee;” the AWM
continuously raised money over the years to fully support the home. 448 The Home
Operating Committee selected a matron to run the facility and they supplied it with
furnishings before it opened on November 1, 1925. 449 The AWM believed it was “the
first home of its kind to be established in the United States, and we feel [it] is filling a
great mission. It is also the first home to be established by mothers provided entirely
by themselves.” 450 The AWM took pride in the Memorial Home’s success because it
was independently executed by a group of women and demonstrated their ability to
succeed without men.
445
For example, the Lincoln Capital (Nebraska) Chapter owned ten shares. Letter, Mrs. C.E. Burton to
General Pershing, February 2, 1932, Folder: American War Mothers, Box 14, General
Correspondence, Papers of John J. Pershing, Library of Congress. Memorial Home Section, “American
War Mothers First Annual Report Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Acceptance of Act of Incorporation
1925.”
446
Ibid.
447
Ibid.
448
Ibid, “Home Operating Committee,” no page.
449
Ibid.
450
Ibid.
176
The AWM dedicated the home as a living memorial in honor of their
organization’s Gold Star Mothers. 451 Rather than erect a national memorial to these
women, the AWM built a home to help veterans and their families cope with the
consequences of the war. The Memorial Home fulfilled its purpose when inhabited by
living bodies, which enabled it to commemorate the Gold Star mothers and their
deceased children through service to the war’s survivors. Through this home, the
AWM helped people heal, embracing the ideology of utilitarian memorials and
veteranist-commemorations.
Other women’s groups that encouraged veteranist-commemorations also
supported the Memorial Home. The Women’s Overseas Service League’s magazine
Carry On published a celebratory article about the home’s July 11, 1926
dedication. 452 The article lauded the AWM for “the intangible gift to the nation’s
invalid service men” at the Fitzsimons Hospital, many of whom suffered from
tuberculosis. 453 It emphasized that funds for the home had been raised through the
AWM annual carnation sale, demonstrating that this site of community service was
built through other acts of community service. 454 Mrs. H.H. McCluer, the AWM
National President, told Carry On that “we felt that the greatest gift we could give our
hospital veterans was to make it possible for them to have their loved ones come and
visit them…many a man is cheered on in his struggle for health by having some
relative visit him. And of course it means so much to the wives and mothers for even
451
Ibid.
Carry On, Vol. V, No. 3 August 1926, pg. 17, WIMSA.
453
Ibid.
454
Ibid.
452
177
a few days at the bedside of those who do not recover.” 455 The WOSL and the AWM
agreed that creating a community-service based memorial to help people heal from
the war represented the proper way to honor Gold Star women. In fact, the Denver
chapter of the WOSL regularly volunteered at the hospital and saw firsthand the
benefits provided by the Memorial Home. 456 The WOSL supported this utilitarian
living memorial building because unlike the Memorial to the Women of the World
War, it provided direct support to veterans and their families and did not waste money
on architectural grandeur.
Through the Memorial Home, the AWM successfully executed the goals of
veteranist-commemorations. The organization’s 1926 report noted how the home
represented “a great asset in service.” 457 The Matron of the home reported that more
than 150 mothers and wives of patients had been lodged at the Home, twenty-seven
of whom received accommodations for free since they did not have adequate
funds. 458 The Home hosted almost one hundred patients, husbands, and guests for
entertainment, as well as parties for the hospital’s Disabled American Veterans post
and the Red Cross. 459 The AWM kept strict financial reports about the home’s
operation in an attempt to use their sparse funds wisely, but they kept in mind that the
home’s mission was not one of profit. 460 As President Mrs. Thomas Spence stated at
the 1929 Convention, in terms of finances, the memorial home would be run at “a
455
Ibid.
“Carry On” VOL. VI No. 2 May 1927, pg. 19, WIMSA.
457
“Report: American War Mothers, 1926,” 7, WIMSA.
458
Ibid.
459
Ibid.
460
Proceedings of the 5th Bi-ennial convention (7th national convention) of the American War
Mothers,” 209, WIMSA.
456
178
loss probably, but we are not running the Home for profit, we are running it for
service.” 461 The audience responded with loud applause, demonstrating their support
for the home’s mission and its veteranist-commemoration agenda. 462
The 1926 dedication of the Memorial Home represented only the beginning of
the AWM’s long term service work at this facility. Carry On reported that several
state AWM chapters planned to build additional buildings at the Memorial Home and
the AWM continued their support of the Memorial Home and the hospital’s patients
for many years. 463 They also expanded and improved the Memorial Home. On
September 27, 1944, in the midst of World War Two, the AWM dedicated a new
building at the Memorial Home. 464 Called the “Margaret N. McCluer Annex,” this
living memorial building honored this senior past national president of the AWM who
held office from 1923 to 1927 (figures 3.8, 3.9, and 3.10). 465 At the dedication
ceremony, Major General Omar H. Quade, the Commanding General of Fitzsimons
General Hospital, gave a speech and thanked the AWM for their constant support of
the hospital since its establishment in 1918. 466 He pointed out how in addition to all
of their other noble work, the AWM saw the hospital’s need for such a facility and
took it on as a national project. 467 In doing so, he said they were “perpetuating for
time immorial, the memories of their own loved ones who so gallantly gave their
lives in World War I, that others who follow, and their loved ones, might partake of
461
Ibid.
Ibid.
463
Ibid.
464
Framed “Remarks of Brigadier General Omar H. Quade…” no folder, no box, WIMSA.
465
Ibid; Program “Dedication of Memory Trees.”
466
Framed “Remarks of Brigadier General Omar H. Quade…”
467
Ibid.
462
179
periods of rest and relaxation, and have a comfortable place of temporary abode,
close to their sick.” 468 General Quade acknowledged that the AWM had created a
complex of living memorials that commemorated the First World War by serving
disabled veterans.
Figure 3.8: “Mrs. Lenore H. Stone pictured with the architect and contractor before
the American War Mothers Home, in Aurora, Colorado, after the completion of the
Margaret N. McCluer Annex.” 27 Sept 1944. American War Mothers National
Headquarters Collection, Gift of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s Memorial Foundation
468
Ibid.
180
Figure 3.9: “On the day of the dedication, September 27, 1944, Mrs. Margaret N.
McCluer (center front) was pictured with those taking part in the ceremonies, at the
entrance of the Missouri Cottage.” American War Mothers National Headquarters
Figure 3.10: “The above photograph was taken during the dedication ceremonies of
the presentation to the American War Mothers of the Margaret N. McCluer Annex
and the Missouri Cottage,” 1944. American War Mothers National Headquarters
181
By 1944, the veterans of the First World War and their families benefited
from the Memorial Home complex alongside veterans of World War Two. Newly
disabled veterans had already begun to arrive at the hospital, ushering in a new
generation of patients and families at the Memorial Home. General Quade recognized
this, and emphasized how the timing of this new annex would help these incoming
veterans. He told the AWM that he was “glad to know that your organization has seen
fit to expand the work of this project, to coincide with the expansion of our hospital
under the trying conditions we are experiencing in this second world war.” 469 General
Quade’s remarks testified to how the AWM expanded their efforts from supporting
veterans of the First World War to assisting any and all veterans in need. At the
Memorial Home complex, the First World War intersected with the Second World
War. These living memorial buildings epitomized the goals of veteranistcommemorations, linked the two world wars, and kept alive the memory of the First
World War and the sacrifices of its Gold Star mothers.
Supporting Fellow War Mothers
In addition to supporting and advocating for veterans, the AWM devoted their time
and resources to supporting members of their own organization. Like the WOSL, the
AWM developed social welfare programs to help war mothers, especially those in
need. In an era when social welfare was only just starting to be provided by the
federal government, these women took it upon themselves to provide for each other.
469
Ibid.
182
Because they believed that they had served and sacrificed for the nation, they felt it
was their patriotic duty to help fellow members and they understood this as a way of
commemorating these mothers’ wartime service.
National officers led the efforts to support members and set an example for others
to follow. In 1929, the Fourth Vice-President, Mrs. Peter Campbell, assisted one Gold
Star Mother in getting her dependency claims, helped another obtain her son’s bonus,
and helped a widow get her claims heard before the Veteran’s Bureau. 470 Efforts such
as these demonstrated the AWM’s recognition that their fellow members were just as
deserving of assistance as veterans.
During the Great Depression, the AWM increased their efforts to support
fellow members and other war mothers. As part of the 1933 discussion about the
proposed increase in dues, President Stone included stories of the destitute mothers
who also sought help at the AWM’s Washington D.C. headquarters when they has
nowhere else to turn. 471 One night, the headquarters received a phone call that a
woman with an AWM membership card had been picked up on the highway, “alone
and destitute.” 472 After this woman arrived at the headquarters, they learned that she
had been a member of the AWM, but had been unable to pay her dues for two
years. 473 The woman had travelled to Washington D.C. to find her estranged son, a
“cripple” whose government pension had been cut, leaving him unable to help his
mother. 474 The staff at the headquarters did their best to assist the woman; they took
470
Proceedings of the 5th Bi-ennial convention (7th national convention) of the American War
Mothers,” 41.
471
Meetings of the Executive Board of the American War Mothers Claypool Hotel…” 4-8.
472
Ibid, 7.
473
Ibid.
474
Ibid, 7-8.
183
her to the emergency room when she became ill and they even moved her back to
Norfolk to seek better help. 475 Stone told the executive board that “I could stand here
for hours and tell you of the cases that have come to us. Yet we have not one cent to
do this relief work with except as we beg or go into our own pockets. Therefore, I
say, there should be some provision whereby every chapter in the United States
should contribute something of a relief fund to be used at National Headquarters.” 476
Without a relief fund raised through a small increase in dues, Stone and the other
AWM leaders at the headquarters could not adequately help the destitute mothers
who came to them for aid. Mrs. Stone even proposed the creation of a penny fund to
help indigent war mothers. 477 As reported by The Indianapolis News on September
26, 1933, she wanted to establish an endowment fund to care for and support indigent
war mothers by having each AWM member save one penny per day for several
years. 478 Like the WOSL, the AWM asked their members to invest in their
organization as a way to help their comrades and themselves.
The AWM also supported legislation that would benefit war mothers. In 1935,
they announced their support for the “Forgotten Mothers Bill” which would have
given dependent parents of wartime casualties an extra $20 a month from the
government, just as the government had already done for widows and orphans. 479 By
supporting this bill, the AWM advocated for these parents. The AWM understood
475
Ibid.
Ibid, 8.
477
“Penny Fund Plan for War Mothers,” The Indianapolis News, September 26, 1933, in Scrapbook:
History of American War Mothers From Oct 1933 to September 1935,” WIMSA.
478
Ibid.
479
“Proceedings Tenth National Convention American War Mothers, September 30-October 3, 1935,
Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, D.C.” 81, no folder no box, WIMSA.
476
184
that to properly memorialize the war, they had to help the mothers of the service
members who died, for these women also suffered from the war.
One of the other ways that the AWM supported their fellow war mothers was
through their steadfast support of the Gold Star Mothers and Widows Pilgrimage. As
discussed in the next chapter, this was a trip paid for by the government that took
women to visit the graves of their relatives in the American cemeteries in Europe.
Many members of the AWM were Gold Star mothers eligible for the trip, so they
formed a national Gold Star Committee that focused on issues that pertained to Gold
Star women. 480 They lobbied for the passage of the Gold Star Pilgrimage bill and
passed official resolutions that stated their support for this bill. 481 Member Ethel
Stratton Nock, a Gold Star Mother very active in their cause, served as the AWM’s
Liaison Officer for the Gold Star Pilgrimage in 1929. 482 She reported that although
“the mothers eligible for the pilgrimage to the cemeteries overseas form only a small
part of the membership of the American War Mothers, the organization as a whole
took an active part in furthering the legislation in Congress” to help not just AWM
members but “all eligible widows and mothers.” 483 Mrs. Nock helped the War
Department notify all widows and mothers who were eligible for the trip, assisted
480
“Constitution and By-Laws, American War Mothers, Amended September 23, 1929,”3, 12.
In 1925, the AWM passed a resolution petitioning Congress to support an iteration of the
Pilgrimage bill that would have sent mothers and fathers of Americans buried overseas to those
cemeteries. At the 1929 Convention in Louisville, they passed another resolution supporting the
Pilgrimage, but this time, fathers were excluded from, while mothers and wives of those buried at sea
or missing in action, as well as women who had already visited the cemetery at their own expense,
were included. “Proceedings of the 5th Bi-ennial convention (7th national convention) of the American
War Mothers,” 136, 195, 358; Resolution 10, “American War Mothers First Annual Report
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Acceptance of Act of Incorporation, 1925.”
482
“Proceedings of the 5th Bi-ennial convention (7th national convention) of the American War
Mothers,” 188.
483
Ibid.
481
185
their efforts in any way that she could, and served as a resource for AWM members
eligible for the trip. 484
As a Gold Star mother who had been able to visit her son’s grave at the
Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France at her own expense, Mrs. Nock
believed in the importance of extending this opportunity to all Gold Star Mothers and
Wives. 485 She appreciated “this opportunity for service” and she told the AWM’s 5th
National Convention how, since her own trip, “my greatest object in life was to bring
the comfort I had received to all other mothers of our glorious sons whose bodies are
guarded by the Stars and Stripes in the beautiful fields of honor overseas.” 486 As an
alternative to building a traditional monument in memory of her son, Mrs. Nock
commemorated him by helping other women heal from their children’s wartime
deaths.
The AWM’s strong support of the Gold Star Pilgrimage indicated that they
believed that a government sponsored trip to the overseas cemeteries constituted a
form of veteranist-commemoration done on behalf of Gold Star women. Their
support for the pilgrimage characterized their overall commitment to serving their
members, other war mothers, and veterans through their commitment to veteranistcommemorations in place of a national monument or a statue.
484
Ibid, 188-192.
Ibid, 185.
486
Ibid, 194.
485
186
Conclusion
At the conclusion of “The War to End All Wars,” many people believed and hoped
there would be no future wars. During their early years, the American War Mothers
adhered to this idea and realized that their organization might be limited in existence
to their lifetime, since there hopefully would not be any subsequent generations of
war mothers. From the outset, the AWM incorporated their organization for twenty
years; in 1921 Alice French explained her intention that when they met in 1937,
twenty years after their formation, they could choose who to give their charter to, if
they decided to continue the organization at all. 487
As time progressed and the members of the AWM grew older, they worried
even more about the longevity of their organization and their ability to pursue
veteranist-commemoration. In 1940, Mrs. Eleanor Cresswell Wagner of the Admiral
R.E. Coontz Chapter wrote to the American Red Cross to thank them for their
continued support of the carnation sale. She explained that “we mothers are getting
old and can no longer earn the money we once did to supply the comforts that our
disabled “World War” Veterans need and seem to expect from the Mothers. While
life lasts we hope not to disappoint these boys of ours and with the kind friends who
year after year help us in our annual drive for funds we plan to carry on.” 488 Wagner’s
concerns demonstrated that the AWM worried that their efforts supporting veterans
would die with them. Without knowing that another war would soon create a new
generation of war mothers, they realized that the legacy of their organization might
487
“Transcript of Proceedings: Second Biennial Convention of American War Mothers, 1921,” 30-32.
Letter from Eleanor Cresswell Wagner to Mrs. C.D. Brawner, May 21, 1940, Folder 610. American
War Mothers, Box 935, RG 200 National Archives Gift Collection, Records of the American National
Red Cross, NACP.
488
187
fade away as they aged and became less active. Even as they grew older and needed
more assistance themselves, they worried about their “boys” and tried to help them.
Throughout the interwar period, the American War Mothers continuously
worked to support veterans and fellow war mothers through veteranistcommemorations and continued these efforts when the U.S. entered World War Two.
Despite their wish that there would be no more war mothers, global events ushered in
a new conflict and brought new women to the organization to continue their legacy of
veteranist-commemorations. Although some local chapters certainly did engage in
more traditional commemorative activities, as a national organization, the AWM did
not erect a large permanent memorial to the First World War. Rather, they wanted
their deeds of service to constitute their memorial; they honored those who served
and sacrificed in the past by focusing on the present and the future. The memory of
the war would live on in their charitable actions.
But memorials in the form of community service are intangible and
ephemeral, something that the AWM seemed to realize. When the members of the
AWM died and could no longer perform acts of commemorative service, their war
memorials would die with them and much of the evidence of their commemorative
contributions might be omitted from the collective memory of the United States.
Even the physical manifestations of their community service efforts proved
fleeting. The American War Mothers National Memorial Home at Fitzsimons
Hospital in Colorado flourished in the years after World War Two, but closed in
1960. The Fitzsimons Hospital itself closed in 1999 and became part of the University
of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, further erasing the memory of the First
188
World War and those who suffered in its aftermath from the landscape. 489 Although
the American War Mothers Memorial Home remains today and was designated a
Local Historic Landmark by the City of Aurora’s Historic Preservation Commission
in 1988, because of its 1960 closure and the hospital’s demise, it no longer serves the
community service purpose intended for it. 490 It appears to be just another quaint
craftsman style home no different from the rest of its neighborhood; the power of the
home’s memorial status has been diminished. In Europe, craftsman buildings
strikingly similar in their purpose to the Memorial Home, and also connected to
honoring Gold Star Mothers, suffered a similar fate, but in this case were completely
erased from the landscape.
489
Since the Fitzsimons Hospital Building is on the National Register of Historic of Historic Places, its
architectural elements have been preserved despite its new usage. The suite of rooms where President
Eisenhower recovered from his 1955 heart attack are preserved and open to the public. Special thanks
to Laura Steadman and Melissa Mezger for alerting me to this information. “Eisenhower Suite: The
President’s 1955 Heart Attack,” University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, n.d. <
http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/administration/history/Pages/EisenhowerSuite.aspx> (12 Feb 2015). Gerry J. Gilmore, “Fitzsimons’ Closure Attracts Investment, High-Tech
Jobs,” DoD News, 5 Jul 2005 <http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=16726> (3 Feb
2015).
490
City of Aurora Historic Preservation Commission, “Aurora Historic Landmarks,” 2012
<https://www.auroragov.org/cs/groups/public/documents/document/006864.pdf> (31 Jul 2014): 22.
189
Chapter 4: “A Great Living and Moving Monument”: The
Gold Star Pilgrimages as Veteranist-Commemorations
A continent and ocean away from Aurora, Colorado, several other craftsman
buildings also commemorated Gold Star women during the early 1930s. Built to
accommodate the needs of the Gold Star mothers and widows who travelled to the
American cemeteries in France aspart of the official government pilgrimage, these
temporary rest houses resembled the American War Mothers Memorial Home more
closely than the formal cemeteries and monuments that surrounded them. By
combining monuments and cemeteries with veteranist-commemorations, the Gold
Star pilgrimages embodied the concept of a hybrid, living service memorial. Senator
Robert Wagner of New York even defined it this way when he argued that “such a
holy pilgrimage to the American shrines in Europe would be a great living and
moving monument to peace.” 491
Similar to other living memorials and veteranist-commemoration projects, the
Gold Star pilgrimages served a functional purpose and helped those who sacrificed
during the war and personally suffered from its consequences. Gold Star women
believed that as mothers and wives who lost their children and husbands, they had
served and sacrificed for the nation. Those Gold Star women who chose to bury their
loved ones in the overseas American cemeteries further served the nation when they
491
“Hearing Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Military Affairs United States Senate,
Seventieth Congress, Second Session, on H.R. 5494 S.2681 S. 5332, Bills to Enable the Mothers and
Unmarried Widows of the Deceased Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines of the American Forces Interred in
the Cemeteries of Europe to make a Pilgrimage to these Cemeteries,” Part 2, February 12, 1929, pg.
27, ProQuest Congressional Publications, <congressional.proquest.com/congressional> (29 September
2014).
190
relinquished their relative’s grave to the American government. These women
lobbied Congress and asked the government to send them on a pilgrimage to the
overseas cemeteries to help deal with and alleviate their grief. As an official act of the
government, the Gold Star pilgrimages demonstrated that the government agreed with
their request to be recognized for their wartime sacrifices through a service rather
than a statue. The government understood that they had an obligation to honor and
help Gold Star women in this way.
When they requested the pilgrimage, Gold Star mothers and widows told the
government that the best way to honor their sacrifices was through veteranistcommemorations. The government’s acquiescence to their request demonstrated their
acceptance of service as a form of commemoration and their agreement that it was
uniquely appropriate for American women. The pilgrimages did not completely reject
more traditional forms of memorialization. The memorial landscape being created by
the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) formed the backdrop of the
pilgrimages and contained the graves and lieux de memoire believed to assuage the
Gold Star women’s grief. The pilgrimages combined these traditional monuments
with the more personal and ephemeral veteranist-commemorations requested by the
pilgrims. At the same time that the pilgrimages included women and veteranistcommemorations in the landscape of military memory, they also separated women
from the main commemorative narrative and only granted them a temporary place at
the overseas cemeteries.
191
The American Battle Monuments Commission: Guardian of America’s Overseas
Military Memory
The story of the Gold Star pilgrimages began during World War One as the U.S.
began to grapple with the question of what to do with the remains of U.S. service
members who died in Europe. In September 1918, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker
publicly pledged that the government would repatriate the war dead to the U.S. for
burial, as had been the case during the Spanish-American War. 492 This promise
ignited controversy as no task of this size had ever been attempted overseas; 126,000
American service-members died in World War One and America’s Allies did not
immediately support the repatriation plan. 493 In response, the War Department sent a
questionnaire to the next of kin that asked if they wanted the remains returned home
or buried in an overseas American military cemetery. 494 Additionally, as the first fully
mechanized, total war, World War One combat resulted in an increase in
unidentifiable remains and missing service members. The absence of identifiable
492
Budreau, Bodies of War: World War I and the Politics of Commemoration in America, 1919-1933,
21. During the Spanish-American War, the U.S. repatriated the remains of its casualties, although the
number of casualties was much less than in WWI. Dean W. Holt, American Military Cemeteries: A
Comprehensive Guide to the Hallowed Grounds of the United States, Including Cemeteries Overseas
(Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1992), 3.
493
Budreau, Bodies of War, 21; Sledge, Soldier Dead: How We Recover, Identify, Bury, & Honor Our
Military Fallen, 135; George Brown Tindall and David Emory Shi, America: A Narrative History 8th
Edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012), 765; American Battle Monuments
Commission, “World War I Listing,” The American Battle Monuments Commission, n.d.,
<http://www.abmc.gov/search/wwi.php> (30 October 2012). The number of American dead from
World War One varies by source; America: A Narrative History 8th Edition lists the total as 126,000
while the ABMC website lists the total number as 116,516.
494
Sledge, 136. American Battle Monuments Commission, “World War I Listing.” Including those
Americans whose remains were never identified and are listed on the Walls of the Missing, a total of
33,717 Americans are buried or memorialized at ABMC World War One cemeteries in Europe.
192
bodily remains in some ways necessitated the establishment of sites of
memorialization abroad.
When they received the questionnaire, many next of kin struggled to choose a
final resting place for their loved ones as they grieved; at the same time, they also had
to negotiate the government bureaucratization and collectivization of their mourning
process. Families worried about the handling of the deceased and the process of
military internment. As they had been during the Civil War, Americans were deeply
concerned with the treatment and burial of the dead, something they described during
the Civil War as the “work” of death. 495 While dealing with the immense death toll of
the Civil War and with the military’s struggle, and often failure, to properly bury
Civil War casualties, Americans created a system of burial and handling of the dead
that accorded honor to the fallen. 496 After the establishment of a national cemetery
system and a standardized process for military burial during the post-Civil War era,
the treatment of the war dead continued to evolve during World War One as
Americans living in the shadow of the Civil War contemplated the nation’s earlier
struggles with military burial. 497 This issue even became politicized when former
President Theodore Roosevelt, who lost his son Quentin in 1918, publicly declared
that he intended to leave Quentin’s body in France because he believed that “where
the tree falls, there let it lie.” 498
495
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York:
Vintage Civil War Library, 2008), xiv, 61-63.
496
Faust, 86-87, 96-101.
497
Ibid. Budreau, Bodies of War, 87.
498
Quoted in Budreau, Bodies of War, 70. Original Quotation from a letter from Roosevelt published
in The New York Times on November, 18, 1918.
193
Despite Roosevelt’s statement, many families remained torn about their burial
choice. 499 Some, like, Mrs. Elizabeth Conley of Philadelphia, seemed unable to
decide between repatriation and an overseas burial. Mrs. Conley lost her sons William
and Francis in the war. The army buried Francis in a temporary grave in France but
never found or identified William’s remains. While deciding what to do with
Francis’s remains, Mrs. Conley changed her mind at least five times; she first told the
Army she wanted Francis’s body back, then she decided to leave it in France, and she
later changed her mind several more times. In 1921, she wrote to the Quartermaster
Corps that after “seeing so many others being brought back to the United States, I
want mine back too.” 500 When she learned that William’s remains could not be
identified and repatriated, she requested that Francis be buried in France because “if I
can’t get both back, I will let them stay there.” 501 Mrs. Conley’s final request came
too late to be cancelled as the Army had already shipped Francis’s remains to the U.S.
In 1931, with her friend and fellow Gold Star mother Mrs. Katherine M. Gallagher,
Mrs. Conley travelled to the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery as part of the Gold
Star pilgrimage to visit the Tablets of the Missing that memorialized William. 502 Mrs.
499
Budreau, Bodies of War, 13.
Letter from Mrs. Elizabeth Conley to the Quartermaster Corps, February 20, 1921, Folder 293:
Conley, Francis X., Box No. 1008, Burial Cases Files 1915-1939, RG 92: Records of the Office of the
Quartermaster General, NACP. These burial files were located at the National Archives, College Park
when the author conducted her research but have since been moved to the National Archives’ National
Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. Information regarding Mr. Conley also came from: Folder:
“American Gold star Mothers Applications for Membership Wa-We 1930-40,” Box: 5, The Papers of
the American Gold Star Mothers Manuscript Division, The Library of Congress.
501
Letter from Mrs. Elizabeth Conley to the Quartermaster Corps, n.d., Folder 293: Conley, Francis X.,
Box No. 1008, Burial Cases Files 1915-1939, RG 92: Records of the Office of the Quartermaster
General, NACP.
502
Letter from Mrs. Katherine M. Gallagher to Captain A.D. Hughes, June 21, 1931, Folder:
Gallagher, Edward, Box No. 1784, Burial Cases Files 1915-1939, RG 92: Records of the Office of the
Quartermaster General, NACP.
500
194
Conley’s tortured decision-making process demonstrates the difficult choices and
anguish faced by Gold Star families.
Although many next of kin decided to have their loved ones repatriated, the
families of 30,921 deceased service members chose an overseas burial. Along with
the need to commemorate missing and unaccounted for service members, this
justified the creation of permanent American military cemeteries in France, Belgium,
and England. 503 In 1917, the Army established the American Graves Registration
Service (GRS) under the Quartermaster Corps to identify and bury American
casualties in temporary cemeteries in Europe. 504 After the war, these scattered graves
needed to be consolidated into the permanent American cemeteries promised by the
government. Congress enacted legislation on March 4, 1923, to establish the
American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) to fulfill this mission. 505 An
independent federal agency of the executive branch, Congress entrusted the ABMC to
act as the “guardian of America’s overseas commemorative cemeteries and
memorials.” 506 First led by General John J. Pershing, the commander of the American
Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War One, the ABMC established eight
cemeteries for the World War One dead and fourteen monuments to honor the
503
Sledge, 136.
505
American Battle Monuments Commission, “American Memorials and Overseas Military
Cemeteries” (American Battle Monuments Commission, 2009), informational pamphlet, 3.
506
American Battle Monuments Commission, “The Commission: Intro,” The American Battle
Monuments Commission, n.d., <http://abmc.gov/commission/index.php> (20 December 2011).
504
195
achievements of the AEF. 507 The cemeteries also contained Tablets of the Missing
that honored the missing and unaccounted for service members. 508
The establishment of these cemeteries required the permission of the countries
where they were located. The French government initially banned the exhumation and
transport of bodies from 1919 to 1921, fearful of the hygienic risks and the
gruesomeness of transporting so many bodies in their already war-torn country. For
many of these reasons, Great Britain prohibited the repatriation of their dead and
created their own foreign cemeteries. 509 Eventually, most of the issues about the
creation of overseas U.S. cemeteries and repatriation were resolved. The French
ultimately supported the creation of American cemeteries since they desired good
relations with the U.S. and reduced the need to move so many bodies throughout
France, a morbid task that the French government feared would upset the French
people. 510
The decision to create these overseas military cemeteries emerged from the
military cemeteries created during and after the Civil War that utilized standardized
507
American Battle Monuments Commission, “American Memorials and Overseas Military
Cemeteries,” 3, 6-14. The ABMC also originally contained a Historical Section, staffed in part by
Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, which published a guidebook to the U.S. World War One battlefields
and individual publications summarizing the operations of each AEF Division. See: Steven Trout, On
the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance, 1919-1941, Prologue.
508
Ibid, 6-14. 30,921 casualties of World War One lie in perpetuity in these cemeteries. See also:
American Battle Monuments Commission, “The Commission: Intro.” Today, the ABMC administers
twenty-five permanent overseas military cemeteries and twenty-six memorials and continues to carry
out its mission of memorializing America’s overseas war dead. American Battle Monuments
Commission, “The Commission: History,” The American Battle Monuments Commission, n.d., <
http://abmc.gov/commission/history.php > (20 December 2011); American Battle Monuments
Commission, “Memorials: Intro,” The American Battle Monuments Commission, n.d.
509
Budreau, Bodies of War, 38-45.
510
For a detailed examination of the American negotiations regarding the war dead and the
negotiations with foreign countries regarding repatriation and the creation of American cemeteries see:
Budreau, Bodies of War, 38-50, 66-69, 116-120.
196
rows of identical headstones and created a collective landscape of the war dead. 511
These vast cemeteries gave the Civil War dead a visual reality and power that shaped
American society and culture for the next century; this same sacrificial landscape is
seen in the meticulous rows of identical headstones in the shape of crosses and Stars
of David at the ABMC cemeteries. 512 The Civil War also created an expectation that
a systematic accounting of the dead and their honorable burial was the obligation of
the government, leading to the creation of the GRS and ABMC. 513
Civil War cemeteries, the private cemeteries established in nineteenth-century
America, and the Allies’ First World War cemeteries all influenced the design of the
ABMC cemeteries. 514 In particular, the designs of many elements at the ABMC
cemeteries stemmed from the neoclassical, gothic, and Egyptian revival styles
popular in American cemetery design at the turn of the century. 515 The
511
Faust, 248-249. For another discussion of the development of Civil War cemeteries see for
example: Blair, Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914.
Prior to the Civil War, Congress had established the Mexico City National Cemetery for the remains of
Americans killed during the Mexican War, many of whom were buried in a common grave. The
ABMC became the steward of this cemetery in 1946. In 1982, the ABMC also acquired the Corozal
American Cemetery in Panama, which contains the graves of American veterans and those who
contributed to the construction of the Panama Canal. American Battle Monuments Commission,
“Mexico City National Cemetery,” informational pamphlet, n.d. <
http://www.abmc.gov/sites/default/files/publications/MexicoCity%20508_9-9-2014.pdf> (5 Feb 2015);
American Battle Monuments Commission, “Corozal American Cemetery and Memorial,”
informational pamphlet, n.d. <
http://www.abmc.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Corozal%20508_9-9-2014.pdf> (5 Feb 2015).
512
Faust, 249. The careful organization of graves and architectural elements at the ABMC cemeteries
that emerged from the Civil War cemeteries must also be understand as a result of the “search for
order” in the U.S. after the Civil War. In discussing the rise of civic art and architecture after the Civil
War, Michele Bogart reminds us that sculptors and artists were also influenced by this interest in the
organization of society, an interest which inspired ideas about civic art that influenced memorials and
cemeteries both at in the U.S. and abroad, including the ABMC projects. See: Bogart, Public Sculpture
and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890-1930, 6.
513
Faust, 271.
514
Budreau, Bodies of War, 39-50.
515
For an in-depth analysis of the evolution and importance of these revival styles in American
cemeteries see: Peggy McDowell and Richard E. Meyer, The Revival Styles in American Memorial Art
(Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1994). For more on the
development and design of American cemeteries see: Kenneth T. Jackson and Camilo José Vergara,
197
commemorative architecture of the ABMC’s cemeteries emerged during a detailed
planning process that involved the members of the ABMC’s Commission (their
governing board) and the eleven American architects they hired to design the
cemeteries and memorials. 516 The resulting cemeteries and memorials displayed the
aesthetic sensibilities of high style modern classicism, the French Romanesque
Revival, and the French eclectic style, popular architectural styles at the time that
embraced modernist aesthetics yet still referenced historical precedents. 517 While
each cemetery has a different design, they are all highly controlled formal spaces that
are symmetrical, precisely landscaped, and include formal entrances, long walkways
with intersecting axes, stone memorials, and chapels (figures 4.1 and 4.2). 518 The
obsessive orderliness of the cemeteries helped to mitigate the violent chaos of the
surrounding battlefields and provided mourners with a controlled space to grieve.
Silent Cities: The Evolution of the American Cemetery (New York: Princeton Architectural Press and
David Charles Sloane, The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
516
These architects include including Paul Cret, supervising architect John Russell Pope, and Egerton
Swartwout. Elizabeth G. Grossman, “Architecture for a Public Client: The Monuments and Chapels of
the American Battle Monuments Commission, “Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians”,
Vol. XLIII, Number 2 (May 1984): 119-143; 119. Grossman provides an in-depth analysis of the
architecture, design, and creation of the ABMC cemeteries and memorials.
517
Grossman, 127; Also, undated video “Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial” from:
American Battle Monuments Commission, “Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial,” The
American Battle Monuments Commission, n.d., <http://abmc.gov/cemeteries/cemeteries/am.php > (20
December 2011).
518
The landscapes of the ABMC cemeteries also resemble parks, tying them to the pastoral burial
grounds popular in the nineteenth century U.S. as well as to the new memorial parks that emerged in
the decades after 1917.
Kenneth T. Jackson and Camilo José Vergara, Silent Cities: The Evolution of the American Cemetery,
5, 28-29. The cemeteries also included office buildings and visitors’ buildings, which were built either
in the French eclectic style or in the French Romanesque Revival style. Virginia and Lee McAlester, A
Field Guide to American Houses, 387. The French eclectic style was popular in America from about
1915 to 1945.
198
Figure 4.1: An early aerial view of the Somme American Cemetery and Memorial,
undated. Note the strictly symmetrical layout of the cemetery. National Archives,
College Park.
Figure 4.2: View of the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial looking
toward the chapel. Note the park-like landscape, the square, the symmetrical grave
plots separated by rows of trees, and the expertly manicured landscape. July 2012.
199
The ABMC cemeteries and memorials served commemorative and diplomatic
goals by representing the U.S. overseas; they subsumed the individuality of those
buried at the cemeteries to the larger purposes of these national shrines. 519 The
process of designing the cemeteries involved intensive discussions and exchanges
between the architects and the ABMC commissioners. 520 Like other civic design
projects, the results reflected the tastes and values of the designers, but also fulfilled
the requirements of these government clients. 521 The government needed the
cemeteries and memorials to properly memorialize the American dead, honor the
contributions of the AEF, and project American diplomatic power in Europe. 522
The memorial landscapes of the ABMC played a central role in the Gold Star
pilgrimages. The main premise of the pilgrimages asserted that visiting these graves
could help ease the pain of the Gold Star pilgrims. Gold Star mother Ethel Stratton
Nock, an ardent advocate for the pilgrimage and an active member of the American
War Mothers, often recounted the life-changing effect of her independent visit to her
son’s grave at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery.
523
During a 1929
Congressional hearing about the pilgrimage legislation, Nock described how after her
519
Robin, Enclaves of America: The Rhetoric of American Political Architecture Abroad, 1900-1965,
30, 60. Robin provides a detailed examination of the political and diplomatic meaning of the ABMC
cemeteries and memorials.
520
Grossman, 120, 143.
521
Grossman, 120, 143. Bogart’s examination of civic art in New York City argues that the closely
connected civic art and City Beautiful movements experienced a larger breakdown after WWI that
caused civic art to start falling out of preference. Conceived and constructed during this breakdown,
perhaps the ABMC cemeteries and memorials were affected by these developments which may explain
the difficulties in the planning process. Bogart. 294.
522
Grossman, 143.
523
the Cemeteries of Europe to make a Pilgrimage to these Cemeteries,” Part 2, February 12, 1929, pg. 67, ProQuest Congressional Publications, <congressional.proquest.com/congressional> (29 September
2014).
200
son’s death, she was “a broken, grief-stricken woman, avoiding all contacts outside
my home and wrapped in a great sorrow that seems to me now as completely
selfish.” 524 Only visiting her son’s grave ended her depression. She explained how “in
the year and a half that has elapsed since I saw the white crosses overseas, I have
devoted my life to service to veterans and gold-star mothers.” 525 The visit enabled her
to find solace in service work that commemorated her son, especially with the
American War Mothers. Nock demonstrated the healing power a cemetery visit could
provide to other Gold Star women.
The Gold Star Pilgrimage Program
The Gold Star pilgrimages formed an important part of the national collective
mourning process after World War One. 526 The Gold Star became an emblem for
American casualties during World War One as a substitute for traditional black
mourning clothes. 527 By wearing a gold star on their clothing, much like a wartime
524
Ibid.
Ibid.
526
The Gold Star Pilgrimages have recently been the subject of several historical studies. These
include: Budreau, Bodies of War; Budreau, “The Politics of Remembrance: The Gold Star Mothers’
Pilgrimage and America’s Fading Memory of the Great War,” 371-411; Graham, The Gold Star
Mothers Pilgrimages of the 1930s; Constance Potter, “World War I Gold Star Mothers Pilgrimages,
Part I”; Constance Potter, “World War I Gold Star Mothers Pilgrimages, Part II”; Fenelon, That Knock
on the Door: The History of Gold Star Mothers in America; Rebecca Jo Plant, Mom: The
Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America; Rebecca Jo Plant, “The Gold Star Mothers
Pilgrimages: Patriotic Maternalists and Their Critics in Interwar America” in Maternalism
Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare, and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century; and Meyer,
“Mourning in a Distant Land: Gold Star Pilgrimages to American Military Cemeteries in Europe,
1930-33.” However, only Budreau’s work includes on an in-depth historical analysis of the Gold Star
Pilgrimages in terms of memory and commemoration. Plant’s work analyzes the pilgrimages in terms
of maternalism and motherhood and situates the program within women’s history. The works by
Graham, Fenelon, and Meyer are more focused on summary than on analysis and Potter’s article
presents a history of the pilgrimages aimed at helping researchers use the associated records at the
National Archives.
527
525
201
medal, Gold Star families used their bodies as memorials and adopted a corporeal,
living embodiment of the memory of the dead.
To create communities for collective mourning and support, the Gold Star
mothers and widows established various organizations such as the Gold Star
Association and the Gold Star Mothers, Inc.; they were also active in the American
War Mothers. 528 These groups lobbied Congress in the 1920s for an official
government-sponsored pilgrimage to their loved ones’ graves. They convinced the
government of its necessity through an appeal to their sacrifices as mothers and
widows, the goodwill it would foster with the former Allies, and the endorsement of
the politically powerful American Legion. 529 The idea for the government-sponsored
pilgrimage program began because of the difficulties in visiting the overseas
cemeteries. 530 Visits to the isolated cemeteries were expensive and hard for many
Gold Star women to make on their own. 531
These various groups lobbied so passionately for the government-sponsored
pilgrimage because they believed that mothers and widows could gain some closure
by visiting the cemeteries. As Ethel Stratton Nock told General Pershing after her
visit: “I feel uplifted mentally and physically because of this pilgrimage and will be
able, I am sure, to bring peace to many troubled hearts of Gold Star Mothers. 532 The
528
Budreau, “The Politics of Remembrance”, 386.
For a detailed description and analysis of the lobbying efforts that led to the passage of the
pilgrimage legislation, see: Budreau, Bodies of War, 192-208.
530
Budreau, “The Politics of Remembrance,” 380.
531
Budreau, “The Politics of Remembrance”, 380.
532
Graham, 76-77; “Proceedings of the 5th Bi-ennial convention (7th national convention) of the
American War Mothers,” 188-195, American War Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift of
Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection; Letter, Mrs. Ethel Stratton Nock to
General Pershing, September 27, 1927, Folder: American War Mothers, Box 14: General
Correspondence, 1904-48, The Papers of John J. Pershing, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
529
202
testimony of women like Nock, who had visited the cemeteries strengthened their
argument. Victory came on March 2, 1929, when after much debate in Congress and
an endorsement from President Coolidge, Public Law 70-952 authorized “an act to
enable the mothers and widows of the deceased soldiers, sailors, and marines, of the
American forces now interred in the cemeteries of Europe to make a pilgrimage to
these cemeteries.” 533 The mothers and widows who accepted the invitation to go on
the trip represented a cross-section of American society at the time. They came from
all across the U.S., from urban and rural backgrounds, varying economic and social
classes, and different religious, ethnic, and racial backgrounds.
The exclusion of men from the final pilgrimage legislation resulted from more
than just a lack of strong male advocacy; it had to do with the historical connections
between women and the mourning process, especially in the context of wartime
deaths and motherhood. 534 While the Gold Star could be worn by any parent, spouse,
or family member of a wartime casualty, and while earlier versions of the pilgrimage
bill included fathers and husbands, men did not receive the same special status and
inclusion as mothers and widows. 535
Deep seated popular sentiment privileged women’s roles in mourning military
casualties. As discussed in chapter three, American women had been encouraged to
533
Budreau, “The Politics of Remembrance,” 373; Budreau, Bodies of War, 202-205; 45 Stat 1508,
1927-1929, Hein Online, <http://heinonline.org> (29 September 2014). For a detailed explanation of
the entire Pilgrimage program and legislation see: Graham, The Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages of the
1930s, 7, 50-74, and Plant, Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America, 55-68.
534
For an in-depth analysis of the pilgrimages in the context of motherhood and maternalism see Plant,
Chapter 2, “Mothers of the Nation: Patriotic Maternalism and Its Critics” in Mom: The Transformation
of Motherhood in Modern America.
535
Graham, 71; Plant, Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America, 64-66.
203
support the nation through the ideals of republican motherhood. 536 Both ideologies
supported the belief that motherhood was a form of service to the nation, especially
during the war when propaganda portrayed women as heroic mother figures, such as
the American Red Cross’s “world’s greatest mother” poster discussed in chapter
two. 537
The memory of the Civil War also influenced women’s roles in
commemoration. Women’s public participation in Civil War mourning; the
establishment and maintenance of military cemeteries, memorials, and battlefields;
and pilgrimages to those sites carved out a unique role for women in
memorialization. 538 Especially in the South, women led the movements to establish
formal military cemeteries and created mourning traditions that honored fallen
soldiers. 539 As the daughters and granddaughters of the generation who memorialized
the Civil War, the women of the First World War grew up observing their elder’s
roles in commemoration.
The Civil War’s legacy and republican motherhood helped justify the Gold
Star pilgrimage, and at times, elevated the mothers above the widows. 540 Although
536
Budreau, Bodies of War, 183-184. For more on republican motherhood see: Plant, Mom: The
Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America, 56-58 and Linda K. Kerber, Women of the
Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America; du Plessis, “Alice French, Indiana War
Mothers: From World War I “Kitchen Soldiers” to Postwar Immigrant Reformers,” 99-118; 103, 101106; and Budreau, Bodies of War, 194-197.
537
Irwin, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening,
86.
538
For more on women’s roles in commemorating the Civil War see for example: Silber, The Romance
of Reunion: Northerners and the South, 1865-1900; Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of
the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture; Mills and Simpson, eds., Monuments to
the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory; Janney, Burying the Dead But
Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations & the Lost Cause.
539
Janney, 1-3; Blair, 5-6.
540
Plant, Mom: The Transformation of Motherhood in Modern America, 56-68; Budreau, Bodies of
War, 88-94.
204
widows were included in the final pilgrimage legislation and many widows went on
the trip, widows did not lobby as persistently for the legislation as did mothers, and
only widows who did not remarry were eligible. 541 Influenced by the heightened
importance given to motherhood, some mothers felt they were more deserving of
inclusion than the widows, and mothers outnumbered widows on the pilgrimages. 542
This may have been in part because mothers had more time than widows to lobby for
the pilgrimage and participate in the trip. By the 1930s, these mothers’ other children
were probably grown, while the un-remarried widows might still have had children at
home and may have been working to support their families. These realities may have
prevented some widows from being as active as the mothers who might still have had
a husband’s support.
The pilgrimages to battlefields, cemeteries, and memorials that became
popular after the Civil War inspired the concept of the Gold Star pilgrimages. 543 After
World War One, pilgrimages to battle sites increased in popularity among most of the
combatant nations. People traveled to the battlefields independently and as part of
organized trips such as the American Legion’s 1927 “Second AEF” trip to their
convention in Paris. 544
The religious connotations of the word “pilgrimage” are significant in the
context of this new wave of battlefield tourism and the Gold Star program. The terms
“pilgrimage” and “pilgrim” carried religious significance, connected the trips to
541
Graham, 59-60.
Graham, 59-60; Plant, 63-64; and Meyer, 40.
543
Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory,154; Budreau, Bodies of War, 87.
544
Budreau, Bodies of War, 176-184, 188-189, 190-191. David W. Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism:
Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919-1939
(Oxford: Berg, 1998), 1-2.
542
205
spiritual rituals of grief, and imbued them with a sense of the sacred that
distinguished them from normal tourism. 545 The ABMC cemeteries contained overtly
religious symbolism and spaces; each cemetery included a chapel and, unlike
Arlington National Cemetery’s rectangular headstones, all of the ABMC’s headstones
were shaped as either crosses or Stars of David. Despite being government programs,
neither the cemeteries nor the pilgrimage were completely secular. At the heart of the
meaning of a pilgrimage is the sense that the pilgrim can capture a part of the past and
experience an event even if they did not participate themselves. 546 Pilgrims try to
distinguish themselves from regular tourists through the connections that bring them
on a pilgrimage; they want their pilgrimage to be viewed as a public ritual linked to
ideas of national or religious identity. 547 These descriptions aptly portrayed the Gold
Star pilgrimages since the pilgrims were distinguished from normal tourists as part of
an elaborate, public, and somewhat spiritual ritual of national remembrance staged by
the U.S. government.
The Army’s Quartermaster Corps meticulously planned and organized the
Gold Star pilgrimages. Every detail of each pilgrim’s journey was accounted for, such
545
Lloyd, 5-7. Robin also asserts that visiting World War One cemeteries were pilgrimages not so
different from those to the holy shrines after the Crusades. Robin, 55. For more about the intersection
of religion and the commemoration of World War One in Europe see: Jay Winter, Sites of Memory,
Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History; Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping
the Memory of the World War; Annette Becker, War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in France,
1914-1930, trans. Helen McPhail (New York: Berg Publishers, 1998); and Meyer, “Mourning in a
Distant Land: Gold Star Pilgrimages to American Military Cemeteries in Europe, 1930-33,”48. Mosse
discusses what he calls “Myth of the War Experience” which depicted the war as a sacred event, as
well as the “cult of the fallen soldier while Becker explains how parts of the front in France had been
deemed sacred land. Mosse, 7; Becker, 124. See also: Harvey Levenstein, Seductive Journeys:
American Tourists in France From Jefferson to the Jazz Age (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1998), 225-228.
546
Lloyd, 217.
547
Lloyd, 220-221.
206
as their transportation from their homes to the point of embarkation at New York
City, their identification badges, and their medical histories. 548 Pilgrims who accepted
the invitation were split into groups that travelled in a “party” during the summers of
1930 to 1933. 549 In total, 6,654 women who represented the social, economic, ethnic,
religious, geographic, and racial diversity of the AEF participated in the Gold Star
pilgrimages. 550 The Army arranged and paid for the entirety of every woman’s trip. 551
Each party’s overseas itinerary varied based on the location of the main cemetery
they were to visit, but most trips to France included visits to the major sights in Paris
such as the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon’s tomb, the Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame. 552
Throughout the trip, the pilgrims’ military officer escorts, nurses, and even
European officials treated them with special respect and honor. Each group that went
to Paris laid a wreath on the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de
Triomphe during a special ceremony. 553 The pilgrims then travelled to the French
countryside to visit the cemeteries and fulfill the purpose of their journey. The
cemetery visits were given careful consideration since the Quartermaster Corps
548
The pilgrimage records at the National Archives include countless items testifying to the
seriousness with which the Quartermaster Corps approached the planning of the pilgrimage. The
records of the Gold Star Mothers and Widows Pilgrimage can be found in the National Archives II,
College Park, MD (NARA) in RG 92: Office of the Quartermaster General under various iterations of
titles such as “Pilgrimage, Gold Star,” “Gold Star Pilgrimage,” and “American Pilgrimage Gold Star
Mothers and Widows.” These records will forthwith be abbreviated as “NARA RG 92” and described
by box number and folder title. The items described in the paragraph above were found in NARA RG
92 Box No. 391, “Folder 561561 “PILGRIMAGE GOLD STAR MOTHERS” (page 448-551) Vol. 5
gm (REPORT).”
549
The Army assigned an identifying letter to each party (for example Party “O”). The size of the
parties varied; for example, the very first pilgrimage group, Party “A,” included 234 women in its 1930
trip while Party “E” in 1932 included just 79 women. Graham, 159, 148.
550
Graham, 202.
551
Graham, 19.
552
Itinerary of “Somme Cemetery Party B Group 5, and Group 2. NARA RG 92 Box 391, “Folder
“561561 PILGRIMAGE GOLD STAR MOTHERS (page 448-551) Vol. 5 gm (REPORT).” Visits to
Brookwood Cemetery in England also included stops at tourist sites.
553
Ibid; Budreau, Bodies of War, 222.
207
realized they could be emotionally upsetting for the Gold Star mothers and widows as
they finally knelt by the grave of their husband or child. Perhaps in keeping with
gender stereotypes of the day that portrayed women as weaker and more emotionally
fragile, they forbade formal ceremonies at the cemeteries or other activities that might
agitate the pilgrims’ emotions. Trip planners wanted to “keep the emotional reaction
at a minimum” to protect the pilgrims’ physical and mental health. 554 This
preoccupation with maintaining the public composure, dignity, and well-being of the
pilgrims during the cemetery visits triggered the construction of rest houses to
provide the pilgrims with some privacy at the cemeteries even as they publicly
mourned throughout the trip.
At the same time that the Gold Star pilgrimages demonstrated the
government’s commitment to the families of World War One casualties, the program
attracted a lot of publicity that promoted the work of the ABMC and the military
during a time of increasing isolationism and pacifism. Colonel Richard T. Ellis, the
main officer in charge of the pilgrimage, created a scrapbook where he saved
newspaper articles and other publicity materials about the pilgrimage. Over one
hundred pages long, this scrapbook documented the high level of public interest in the
program and contained dozens of newspaper articles both praising and criticizing the
program. 555 The pilgrimage also gained national exposure in popular culture through
John Ford’s film Pilgrimage (1933) that told the fictional story of a Gold Star mother
554
Report about the pilgrimages, March 7, 1931, Folder “319.1 Pilgrimage Gold Star (Europe 1930,
1931, 1932, 1933PILG),” Box 360, RG 92, NACP.
555
“Scrapbook of Col. Richard T. Ellis.” Found in: Box 1: Scrapbook of Col. Richard T. Ellis (Gold
Star Pilgrimages) 1930. Transportation Request. 1930 (Gold Star Pilgrimage). Letters sent Relating to
Provision of Subsistence Stores during Mexican War. Flood Sufferers in Miss. Valley (1914-15), RG
92, NACP.
208
from Arkansas who struggled with regrets about her relationship with her son during
the trip. 556 With so much public interest in the program from the media and even
Hollywood, the Army carefully crafted the official image of the pilgrimage and tried
to improve Army’s public reputation. 557
The decision to racially segregate the pilgrimages produced backlash against
the program from the African-American community and their supporters and tainted
it with the scars of Jim Crow America. 558 The 168 African-American mothers and
widows who accepted their pilgrimage invitations traveled in separate, segregated
parties during the summers of 1930 and 1931. 559 The segregation of the pilgrimages
demonstrated the restricted inclusion of African-American women into American
commemorative culture. Although African-American women were allowed to the
participate in the pilgrimages, like the WOSL, American Red Cross, American War
Mothers, and the AEF, the government adhered to Jim Crow era policies.
American women’s success in convincing the U.S. Government to sponsor
and pay for the entire pilgrimage demonstrated the growing power of women at the
national level and their increasingly important place in the commemorative culture
surrounding World War One. Even after winning the franchise, these women
remained on the political stage and framed their civic identities in terms of uniquely
556
Pilgrimage, dir. John Ford, 99 mins., Fox Film, 1933, DVD. The film was loosely based off of a
short story with the same title by I.A.R. Wylie published in The American Magazine in November
1932. I.A.R. Wylie, “Pilgrimage,” The American Magazine Vol. CXIV, No. 5 (November 1932); 4447, 90-96.
557
Lisa Budreau argues that the pilgrimages and American remembrance of WWI in general was
politically motivated. Budreau, Bodies of War, 241.
558
Budreau, Bodies of War, Ch. 22 “Stars of Black and Gold.” In this chapter, Budreau conducts an indepth examination and analysis of the segregated Pilgrimages. For more on the segregation of the
pilgrimage program and other public criticisms of the pilgrimages see: Plant, 68-77.
559
209
female issues such as motherhood and marriage. 560 Just as they had after the Civil
War and the Spanish-American War, women made significant contributions to the
memorialization of World War One. But as the temporary rest houses constructed at
the cemeteries showed, this inclusion remained gender-restricted and ephemeral; it
left no permanent, tangible evidence of women’s importance to overseas
commemoration on the landscape.
Gold Star Pilgrims Served and Sacrificed for the Nation
Gold Star mothers and widows defined the loss of their child or husband as a wartime
service and sacrifice that included them in the group of women honored by the
American Red Cross’s Memorial Building to the Women of the World War. Because
of their loss, they received a place of distinction in the interwar commemorative
culture.
Those Gold Star women who choose an overseas burial performed a further act of
service and sacrifice by presenting their service member’s bodily remains and grave
to their country. Whether they made this choice because of their patriotism, their
personal beliefs, or other circumstances does not negate the fact that an overseas
burial allowed the U.S. government to use their loved one’s body for diplomatic and
political purposes, even if this was not their intention. The families of the missing and
unaccounted for had no choice about what to do with their loved ones’ bodies; these
560
Plant provides a detailed assessment of women’s political activism during the interwar period in the
context of the pilgrimages. Plant, 57.
210
women were invited on the pilgrimage to view their relative’s name on the Tablets of
the Missing and stand by an unknown soldier’s grave.
Newspaper coverage of the pilgrimages reiterated that the Gold Star pilgrims
served and sacrificed for the nation. A May 1931 article in The National Tribune
wrote that “this tribute to motherhood was offered by Congress in order that these
women who made such glorious sacrifices in the World War might visit the scenes of
their sons’ great heroism.” 561 By saying that the pilgrimage was “offered” by
Congress, the article highlighted that the trip was a service from the government
requested by the Gold Star women. 562 Invoking the rhetoric of republican motherhood
(but omitting the widows), the article described the mothers’ service as raising their
sons into men and sending them to battle. This made it “peculiarly fitting that a nation
should pay tribute to its motherhood,” for, as Milton said, “they also serve who only
stand and wait.” 563
Dignitaries involved with the pilgrimage agreed that the Gold Star women
served and sacrificed during the war. At the “tea-reception” held at the Restaurant
Laurent in Paris for Party “A” of the pilgrimage on May 26, 1932, the American
ambassador to France, Walter E. Edge, echoed these sentiments. He declared that
1932 inaugurated “the third year that the American Government has given the
opportunity for the representatives of American womanhood who made greater
sacrifices than those who actually laid down their lives, to visit France and the shrines
561
“A Man’s Best Friend,” The National Tribune, May 14, 1931, in album titled “Press Clippings
Mothers and Widows Pilgrimage to the Cemeteries of Europe,” Box 348, RG 92, NACP.
562
Ibid.
563
Ibid.
211
of your immortal loved ones.” 564 Edge acknowledged the pilgrimages as veteranistcommemorations done by the government on behalf of the pilgrims at their request.
General Pershing agreed, and proclaimed that “no group of Americans knows more
deeply, more completely what war means than a Gold Star Mother or Widow. It is
she who makes the real sacrifice, she who knows how to lay the most precious gift
upon the altar of freedom more than any other.” 565 He even told them that “I feel very
greatly, and I want to thank you in my own name for what you did for the victory of
the American army, which of course means the victory of the Allies.” 566 Pershing
claimed to believe that these women made the war’s hardest sacrifices.
The ABMC cemeteries and memorials reminded Europeans of America’s
participation in the war and glorified the AEF. They helped the U.S. claim a place in
the postwar international political system and they symbolically projected American
power overseas. 567 These sites demanded what one scholar called “certain privileges
for the United States in other lands” and served as “a tool for consolidating America’s
newly adopted international agenda in the postwar period.” 568 For example, the
Montfaucon Memorial that commemorated the American victory in the MeuseArgonne offensive towers over the countryside from atop a hill. Visible for miles, it
564
“Speeches made at tea-reception at Restaurant Laurent on May 26th, 1932, Party “A”—Gold Star
Mothers and Widows: Ambassador Walter E. Edge,” Folder: 319.1 Pilgrimage Gold Star Party A.
1932, Box, 369, RG 92, NACP.
565
Ibid.
566
Ibid.
567
Robin, Enclaves of America, 3-4. For more on the diplomatic purposes of the pilgrimages see:
Graham, 72-73 and Budreau, Bodies of War, 100-106; Richard Hulver, “Remains in Peace: The
Diplomacy of American Military Bodies in France, 1919-1972,” Ph.D. Dissertation, West Virginia
University, 2015.
568
Robin, 30-31.
212
asserts the U.S. military’s perception that the AEF turned the tide of the war (figure
4.3). 569
Figure 4.3: Montfaucon American Monument, France. Note the height of this
classically inspired monument and the stairs leading up to its perch on the top of a
large hill. July 2012. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Whether or not they were conscious of it, Gold Star families who chose to bury
their loved ones in an overseas military cemetery instead of repatriating them enabled
these cemeteries to fulfil various political purposes. Memorials alone could not
achieve the diplomatic goals of the U.S. Hundreds of military cemeteries from the
different combatant nations peppered the fields of France and Belgium and embedded
569
American Battle Monuments Commission, “Montfaucon American Monument,” American Battle
Monuments Commission, n.d. <http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/montfauconamerican-monument> (30 September 2014).
213
the blood of their men into the landscape of the Western Front (figure 4.4). 570 The
U.S. needed overseas cemeteries to position the nation equally alongside the other
combatants, something they could not do without the bodies of American service
members. Although it may or may not have been their intention, Gold Star women
served the nation by relinquishing the bodies of their loved ones. 571 They surrendered
the ability to visit a grave near their homes and entrusted the eternal care of their
relative to the state. In the eyes of the government, this service and sacrifice elevated
these Gold Star women above others who chose repatriation.
Figure 4.4: Tyne Cot Cemetery, Belgium. This British cemetery is run by the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the British equivalent and predecessor of
the American Battle Monuments Commission. May 2009. Photograph by Allison S.
Finkelstein.
570
Budreau, Bodies of War, 37-50. For more on the First World War cemeteries established by the
British see: David Crane, Empires of the Dead: How One Man’s Vision Led to the Creation of WWI’s
War Graves (London: William Collins, 2013).
571
For more on how the bodies of American casualties were used for diplomatic purposes see: Hulver,
“Remains in Peace: The Diplomacy of American Military Bodies in France, 1919-1972.”
214
The government recognized the Gold Star pilgrims’ assistance in promoting a
powerful international image of the U.S. and fostering ties of friendship and peace
with Europe. Senator Robert Wagner believed that “the ranks of mothers and
sweethearts would constitute a new expeditionary force and a first line of defense for
peace. Europe would see us in a new light—not as fighting doughboys, nor as gallant
legionnaires, but as a nation of homes and families whose members are capable of the
most pious sentiments.” 572
The French military praised the pilgrims for their help in fostering a positive
Franco-American diplomatic relationship. At a reception for the pilgrims on August
18, 1932, French General Pagezy praised the pilgrims for choosing to bury their loved
ones in France. 573 He told them that: “It is a great honor to us to have you maintain
their tombs in France. It is a deed of which we understand the full meaning and which
we feel profoundly…we keep very piously this sacred trust. It is to us a proof of the
eternal friendship that has always existed and will always exist between our two
nations.” 574 Although the cemeteries were under American care, the pilgrims
recognized the sacred nature of the cemeteries and battle sites on French soil.
Throughout the pilgrimages, French citizens emphasized the importance of the
cemeteries that the bound the Gold Star women to France. The Société Bienvenue
Française, a French organization committed to promoting intellectual and moral
572
the Cemeteries of Europe to make a Pilgrimage to these Cemeteries,” Part 2, February 12, 1929, pg.
27, ProQuest Congressional Publications, <congressional.proquest.com/congressional> (29 September
2014).
573
“Speech of General Pagezy at Reception August 18, 1932,” Box 2012.94, Julia C. Underwood
Pilgrimage Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
574
Ibid.
215
exchanges between nations, presented each pilgrim with a small bag of French soil
made from conjoined pieces of the American and French flags (figure 4.5). 575 At a
1932 “tea-reception,” a representative of this society told the pilgrims that they
thought “you should keep with you something of the remembrance of the places
where you have been, and of the soil of France where your beloved have so gloriously
lain down their lives. Therefore we have asked you to accept from our society a little
bag, and in that bag earth of France which is sacred to you.” 576 A letter that
accompanied the bags explained that it was “a little memorial present, from your
pious pilgrimage to France” and that it was “filled with the earth of France, which is
sacred to you, as it is to us, because of all the young heroes who rest in our soil.” 577
The Société Bienvenue Française regarded the Gold Star pilgrimages as sacred
commemorative journeys rooted in the land where Americans fought and died. They
wanted these souvenirs to serve as a memory of the trip and the French lieux de
memoire so that the women could actually bring the battlefield home with them.
575
Letter from La Bienvenue Française to Pilgrims, Summer 1932, Box 2012.94, Julia C. Underwood
Pilgrimage Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri.
576
Mothers and Widows: Monsieur de Billy,” Folder: 319.1 Pilgrimage Gold Star Party A. 1932, Box,
369, RG 92, NACP.
577
Letter from La Bienvenue Française to Pilgrims.
216
Figure 4.5: The symbolic bag of French soil given to Pilgrim Mrs. Julia C.
Underwood by La Société Bienvenue Française. Julia C. Underwood Pilgrimage
Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City, Missouri. Photograph
courtesy of the National WWI Museum.
The Army treated the pilgrims as participants of the war and presented them
with an official armband and badge to wear on the trip to distinguish them from
normal American tourists. During a separate shipboard ceremony, the United States
Lines presented each pilgrim with a special gold medal to be worn around their necks
as they sailed on the company’s ocean liners (figure 4.6). 578 Aesthetically, these
badges resembled military medals and aligned the pilgrims with male veterans and
symbolically equated their sacrifices with military service. The top of each Army
badge contained a personalized identification plate engraved with the pilgrim’s
name. 579 A red, white, and blue ribbon was affixed to this name plate, below which
578
Budreau, Bodies of War, 218; Medals and Program for Memorial Service on board the SS
Leviathan, August 12, 1932, Box 2012.94, Julia C. Underwood Pilgrimage Collection, National WWI
579
Medals and Program for Memorial Service on board the SS Leviathan, August 12, 1932.
217
hung a medal. This medal consisted of an American eagle on top of two American
flags that rested on a medallion. In the center of this medallion was the iconic gold
star surrounded by the words “pilgrimage of Mothers and Widows” that identified the
wearer as a Gold Star pilgrim. 580 Authorized by the War Department and issued by
the Quartermaster Corps, this badge served as a pseudo-military medal that honored
the pilgrims for their wartime service just as the WWI Victory Medal honored
military veterans and marked them as having served their country. 581
580
Ibid.
The War Mother Goes “Over There,” by Major Louis C. Wilson, Q.M.C, in The Quartermaster
Review” May-June 1930, Pg. 22, in album titled “Press Clippings Mothers and Widows Pilgrimage to
the Cemeteries of Europe,” Box 348, RG 92, NACP. These medals and the way they made these
civilian women part of the U.S.’s military apparatus bear testament to the accuracy of Michael S.
Sherry’s argument about the militarization of the U.S. since the 1930s. They are also unsettlingly
similar to the military-style medals given to German women by the Nazis, such as the Cross of Honor
of the German Mother given to women who bore a certain number of healthy children to serve the
Reich. Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s, ix-xii. For
information on the WWI Victory Medal see for example: Naval History and Heritage Command,
“World War I Victory Medal,” Naval History and Heritage Command, n.d.
<http://www.history.navy.mil/medals/ww1vic.htm> (13 December 2014); Alexander J. Laslo, The
Interallied Victory Medals of World War I (Albuquerque, New Mexico: Dorado Publishing, 1992), 86123.
581
218
Figure 4.6: Julia C. Underwood’s Pilgrimage medals. From left to right: the Official
War Department Medal, United States Lines Medal, and Gold Star pin. Julia C.
Underwood Pilgrimage Collection, National WWI Museum Archives, Kansas City,
Missouri. Photograph courtesy of the National WWI Museum.
The Gold Star Pilgrimages as Veteranist-Commemorations
Although not specifically referred to as community service, analysis of the Gold Star
pilgrimages demonstrates that they constituted a form of veteranist-commemoration.
Every Gold Star woman who chose an overseas burial, or whose loved one was
missing and unaccounted for, received an invitation to participate in the pilgrimage
completely free of charge. By paying for the pilgrimage, the government performed a
charitable act at the request of these women, who saw it as the government’s
obligation to them. The government admitted that no physical memorial or tangible
offering such as money or certificates could fully honor and commemorate the
Americans buried overseas and their mothers or widows. The government could
219
properly honor the sacrifice of these women only by sending them on a pilgrimage to
the overseas cemeteries.
The cooperation of the ABMC indicated that the very agency in charge of
traditional commemoration overseas also understood the value and necessity of
veteranist-commemorations in addition to statuary memorials. General Pershing,
Chairman of the ABMC, admitted to the pilgrims that “no monument can sufficiently
honor these fallen dead too greatly, nor can be erected in any material form anything
that will express completely the feelings of gratitude that are in our hearts for what
they did for us.” 582 Even though he devoted his postwar war life to building physical
monuments to the AEF in Europe, Pershing recognized their limits. As debate
continued about the best way to memorialize the war, Pershing did not fully reject
traditional physical memorials, but conceded that projects like the Gold Star
pilgrimage augmented these memorials and commemorated the war by helping its
survivors.
Testimony from the pilgrims indicated that the pilgrimages succeeded in
comforting them and that they understood the trip as a type of veteranistcommemoration done on their behalf. One pilgrim believed that trip was “a great
comfort to every pilgrim mother I’m sure, to have had this rare privilege.” 583 She
recognized that the government provided an experience that might otherwise have
been impossible for many of these women. She also returned feeling patriotic, and
582
Mothers and Widows: General J.J. Pershing,” Folder: 319.1 Pilgrimage Gold Star Party A. 1932, Box,
369, RG 92, NACP.
583
“A Guest of the Government” in “File 516—Pilgrimage, Gold Star,” Box 352, RG 92, NACP.
220
explained that if she were a man she would get an eagle tattooed upon her chest. 584
She “went over 100% American and returned 200%,” feeling much gratitude as she
shouted ““Vive la France,” and exclaimed ““Vive la America,” my beloved
country.” 585 In July 1930, Maud L. Rieves wrote a letter of thanks for the pilgrimage
and requested that she be remembered “to Capt. Earnest who had charge of our bunch
while in France and who was untiring in his efforts to serve the Gold Star
Mothers.” 586 By using the phrase “to serve,” Mrs. Rieves indicated that she
understood the pilgrimage as a service done for the Gold Star women by the
government.
The pilgrimage profoundly affected its participants and they spoke of its
positive influence on their emotional recovery. On July 21, 1930, Mrs. Callie M.
Laird of Little Rock, Arkansas, thanked the War Department for the trip, which she
understood “was made possible by the generosity of the government.” 587 She
described how:
while it was especially sad at the cemeteries, at the same time, our burden was
made lighter when we saw with our own eyes, the wonderful manner in which
the cemeteries were kept and of which previously we had only our vague
imagination. I am so glad now after this visit that I decided to leave the
remains where they are buried…I am at home now, thoroughly satisfied that
even tho we sacrificed so much for Democracy, yet the Government had done
so much for us that our burden is made lighter. 588
Mrs. Laird’s pilgrimage eased her heartbreak and allowed her to see firsthand how
honorably the overseas cemeteries commemorated the American dead. Visiting these
584
Ibid.
Ibid.
586
Ibid.
587
Letter from Mrs. Callie M. Laird to the War Department, July 21, 1930, Folder 330.1 Pilgrimage
Gold Star 1930, Box 376. RG 92, NACP.
588
Ibid.
585
221
sites convinced her that she made the right decision when she chose an overseas
burial. Hilde A. Meystre, the mother of Private Emile F. Meystre buried at AisneMarne American Cemetery, penned the poem “Our Hearts O’Erflow” upon her return
from the 1930 pilgrimage. 589 The poem described how both Gold Star mothers and
their sons sacrificed for freedom, and ended with two verses that described the
pilgrimage as a government service that aided the pilgrims:
We are the Gold Star mothers,
Back from La Belle France.
Back to our own loved country,
That gave us this wondrous chance,
Gave us a time of pleasure
To ease our saddened hearts,
Things we never dreamed of
We saw in those treasured marts.
We thank the Congress of U.S.A.
And all others that helped the way
To give us mothers a perfect day. 590
Meystre’s repetition of the word “gave” emphasized that the pilgrimage was a form
of veteranist-commemoration provided by the U.S. government at the pilgrims’
behest. By using “pleasure” and “saddened hearts” back to back, she showed the
contrasting elements of the pilgrimage that made it successful. Meystre understood
that by passing the legislation and providing the trip, Congress honored the pilgrims
through veteranist-commemorations. By ending the poem with gratitude, she
confirmed its success in achieving the goals of veteranist-commemorations.
589
“Our Hearts O’Erflow” by Hilda A. Meystre, in album titled “Press Clippings Mothers and Widows
Pilgrimage to the Cemeteries of Europe,” Box 348, RG 92, NACP.
590
Ibid.
222
The Gold Star Pilgrimage Rest Houses as a Physical Manifestation of VeteranistCommemorations
The temporary rest houses constructed at the ABMC cemeteries for the use of the
pilgrims represented the physical manifestation of the government’s act of veteranistcommemoration in executing the trip. Built specifically to accommodate women’s
needs and to provide them with a private place for comfort and rest, they created a
distinctly female space on the predominantly male military landscape at the
cemeteries. Despite the gendered stereotypes they adhered to, the rest houses attested
to the Army’s dedication to the pilgrimage’s success and to the women’s comfort and
safety.
The Quartermaster Corps constructed these rest houses at several ABMC
cemeteries to ensure the health of the pilgrims because of the isolated locations of
some of the cemeteries and their lack of adequate toilet, refreshment, and rest
facilities. 591 Although most of the widows were middle-aged or slightly younger, the
mothers were often older and in poorer health, which concerned the Quartermaster
Corps. 592 Since the trip proved physically demanding, the officers wanted to provide
appropriate facilities throughout the journey; health and safety were of paramount
importance.
591
“Col. Ellis Report of 1930 Pilgrimage in Europe. Submitted March 7, 1931,”pg 16. NARA RG 92
Box 348 Folder “Reports Annual New York and Europe 1931.” Budreau, Bodies of War, 206. Ellis is a
central figure in Budreau’s book.
592
“Col. Ellis Report of 1930 Pilgrimage in Europe. Submitted March 7, 1931,”pg 1-2, Folder
“Reports Annual New York and Europe 1931,” Box 348, RG 92, NACP. Colonel Ellis stated that the
average age of the Pilgrims was between 61 and 65. See also: Budreau, Bodies of War, 206. The
Quartermaster Corps gathered detailed reports about the pilgrims’ health prior to the trip and kept
detailed records of their health during the journey. See: NARA RG 92 Box No. 59 Folder “1932.” This
folder contains medical reports from the pilgrims’ doctors about their health conditions before the trip
and Official Pilgrimage lists stating their conditions of health.
223
The Army used the pilgrimages to try to improve the military’s reputation,
and the national press coverage of the pilgrimages might have influenced their
decision to build the rest houses since they could face a potential public relations
disaster if the trip compromised the pilgrims’ health. 593 If successful, the pilgrimages
could positively publicize the Army during a time of public cynicism about the Great
War. 594 By protecting the pilgrims’ well-being, the rest houses demonstrated the
Army’s concern for their welfare and helped prevent potential criticisms or
controversies.
The rest houses originated in several similar American building types
common in the decades around the 1930s: ladies rest rooms, military base hostess
houses, and country clubs (figure 4.7). Recognized parts of the American landscape,
these structures accommodated women and families in public spaces and
predominantly male environments. 595 Because the rest houses were vernacular
structures—buildings that emerge from the everyday, commonplace landscape—their
design, function, and distinctly feminine nature would have been familiar to the
pilgrims and the Army. By imitating these buildings, the Army included the pilgrims
593
See: “Scrapbook of Col. Richard T. Ellis.”
Michael Sherry describes the early 1930s as a time of “the First World War’s sour legacy of
revolution, nationalism, and debt” were “fresh to Americans.” Sherry, 15.
595
For more information on the architectural origins of the rest houses see: Allison S. Finkelstein, “A
Landscape of Military Memory: The Gold Star Pilgrimage Rest Houses of 1930-33,” forthcoming with
Buildings and Landscapes: The Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. For information on
ladies rest rooms see: Kristin L. Britanik, “Where are the Ladies’ Rest Rooms?: The Evolution of
Women-Only Resting Rooms Amid Social Changes of the Early Twentieth-Century,” Master’s thesis,
The University of Maryland, College Park, 2012; Carroll Van West, “Assessing Significance and
Integrity in the National Register Process: Questions of Race, Class, and Gender, In Preservation of
what, for whom? A critical look at historical significance., ed. Michael A. Tomlan (Ithaca, NY: The
National Council for Preservation Education, 1998); 109-116.For more information on military bases
hostess house see: Cynthia Brandimarte, “Women on the Home Front: Hostess Houses during World
War I,” Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter 2008): 201-222; 202. For more information on early twentieth-century
on country clubs see: James M. Mayo, The American Country Club: Its Origins and Development
(New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 134.
594
224
at the cemeteries, although the rest houses simultaneously separated the women from
the main commemorative narrative at the cemeteries and relegated them to the realm
of mourning mothers and widows, even though they actively influenced the
memorialization work at the cemeteries. 596
Figure 4.7: YWCA Hostess House at Plattsburg Barracks. From “Report of Hostess
House Committee.” Note its stylistic similarity to the Gold Star pilgrimage rest
houses. War Work Council, National Board of the Young Woman’s Christian
Associations, Note the large front porch, front gable, and other elements that show a
similarity to the Gold Star rest houses. From:
<https://archive.org/details/reportofhostessh00nati>
596
In considering how women fit into the male military landscape of commemoration, the author took
heed of Sally McMurry’s call for scholars of vernacular architecture to integrate women’s history more
thoroughly into their work. Angel Kwolek-Folland’s suggestions for using gender as a category of
analysis in vernacular architecture studies and Joan W. Scott’s concept of gender as a category of
historical analysis were also consulted. Sally McMurry, “Women in the American Vernacular
Landscape,” Material Culture, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Spring 1988): 33-49. Angel Kwolek-Folland, “Gender
as a Category of Analysis in Vernacular Architecture Studies,” in Gender, Class, and Shelter:
Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, V, edited by Elizabeth Collins Cromley and Carter L.
Hudgins (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1995): 3-10; Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A
Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 5 (Dec 1986):
1053-1075.
225
The architecture of the rest houses indicated their purpose as places of comfort
and familiarity to the pilgrims. 597 Similar to stateside bungalows, these one-story
vernacular structures were designed in the craftsman style popular in the early
twentieth century. 598 In 1930, Colonel Ellis described the rest houses as “attractive
wooden one-story houses laid out and furnished something along the lines which one
would expect to find in an attractive country-club” with “a comfortable, shady porch
and a large open fire-place.” 599 Based on photographs, Ellis’ accurately described the
rest houses; those at the Meuse-Argonne, Oise-Aisne, Aisne-Marne, and St. Mihiel
looked very similar if not exactly alike (figures 4.8, 4.9, 4.10, and 4.11). The rest
houses had hipped roofs with a central projecting cross gable on the front façade and
a Palladian window centered in the gable. The structures included decorative
projecting false beams in the gables and exposed rafters under the eaves, classic
elements of craftsman houses. 600 The roofing material cannot be determined but had a
decorative pattern that resembled diamond-shaped shingles. According to Ellis’
description, it can be inferred that the horizontal exterior siding was wood. The large
double front doors had six lights in the upper two-thirds, matching the design of the
windows. On their front and side facades, the houses included what appear to be
paired casement windows with two tall sashes that open out from the center. 601
597
Photographs and documentary evidence of the rest houses enable an architectural examination of
the structures, even though no rest Gold Star houses or blueprints of them survive. For an in-depth
architectural analysis of the rest houses see: Finkelstein, “A Landscape of Military Memory: The Gold
Star Pilgrimage Rest Houses of 1930-33.”
598
McAlester, 453; Finkelstein.
599
“Col. Ellis Report of 1930 Pilgrimage in Europe. Submitted March 7, 1931,” pg. 16, Folder
“Reports Annual New York and Europe 1931,” Box 348, RG 92, NACP.
600
McAlester, 454. These elements of the craftsman style were meant to reflect the arts and crafts’
movement’s appreciation of craftsmanship and oriental architecture.
601
Special thanks to Dr. Don Linebaugh for advice on how to describe these windows and other
architectural elements of the rest houses.
226
Figure 4.8: Party “O”—August 19, 1931. “In front of Rest House, Meuse-Argonne
American Cemetery. Captain [Boyette], Lieutenant Wiley, Cemetery Superintendent
Shields, Major Campbell.” National Archives, College Park.
Figure 4.9: Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial, rest house, undated. Note
the landscaping around the building which included what appear to be plants growing
up the porch supports. National Archives, College Park.
227
Figure 4.10: Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial, rest house, undated.
Note the ‘private’ sign that indicated that the rest house was not to be entered by
regular cemetery visitors. National Archives, College Park.
Figure 4.11: St. Mihiel American Cemetery and Memorial, rest house, undated.
Positioned close to a grave plot, this rest house must have been visible to most of the
cemetery’s visitors while the nearby graves provided a stark reminder of the purpose
of the pilgrimage. This image encapsulates the pilgrimage’s combination of
permanent statuary memorials and veteranist-commemorations. National Archives,
College Park.
228
Many photographs show furniture on the porches and plants climbing up the
porch supports, suggesting that the pilgrims utilized these outdoor spaces. The rest
houses were surrounded by plants and landscaping, although the landscape features
near the rest houses were more informal than the highly formalized cemetery
horticulture. Evidence of the exact location of the rest houses at the cemeteries does
not survive, so their relation to the other elements of the cemetery cannot be
determined. 602
The interiors of the rest houses contained “tables, comfortable chairs and a
rest room for the use of the nurses and the hostess, as well as a kitchen equipped with
electric stove, water heater and coffee [perculator].” 603 The large military maps on the
walls provided the only indication that these rooms were not located in a typical
American home or country club. These maps almost seem like a male, military
intrusion into the home-like environment at the rest houses. An interior image of the
St. Mihiel rest house even showed Lt. Lucas giving an illustrated talk to the pilgrims
using the map over the fireplace, possibly an account of the St. Mihiel Offensive
(figure 4.12). While intended to be female-oriented areas of relaxation, the rest
houses also served educational purposes, with presentations by officers who led the
trips.
602
The author has not yet found documents showing the location of the rest houses in the National
Archives in College Park, the ABMC’s Headquarters in Garches, France, or at four ABMC cemeteries
(Suresnes, Meuse-Argonne, St. Mihiel, and Brookwood). In discussions with current ABMC
employees in 2012 and 2013, the general consensus was that the location of the rest houses is still a
mystery. Additionally, while visiting the Meuse-Argonne and St. Mihiel cemeteries in 2012 the author
was unable to find any physical evidence or footprints of the rest houses visible to the naked eye.
603
Ibid. It is important to note that the rest houses did not contain any bedrooms, apartments, or spaces
for the pilgrims to sleep; they were not for overnight accommodations. The pilgrims typically stayed at
hotels in nearby towns and the rest houses were used solely for rest, relaxation, and toilet needs while
during the cemetery visits.
229
Figure 4.12: Lt. Lucas giving an illustrated talk to pilgrims at the Rest House at St.
Mihiel Cemetery, undated. This image demonstrates the contrast between the
military and the home-like atmosphere of the rest houses. Note the exposed beams in
the ceiling; these were a common feature in arts and crafts style architecture. National
Archives, College Park.
The rest houses and the hostesses that ran them succeeded in providing
comfort and privacy to the pilgrims during the cemetery visits. Colonel Ellis reported
that their construction “undoubtedly was for the good of the pilgrimage and received
favorable commendation not only from official visitors but from the Pilgrims
themselves.” 604 In a 1930 letter of thanks to Colonel Ellis, pilgrims Mrs. Hattie B.
Bisbee and Mrs. Sarah Parker reminisced about “the Hostess Mrs. Abbot[m] and
Madam Juliette who in their sweet sympathetic manner made each visit to the
cemetery much easier to bear.” 605 WOSL member Eleanor Barnes visited the rest
604
“Col. Ellis Report of 1930 Pilgrimage in Europe. Submitted March 7, 1931,” pg. 17, Folder
“Reports Annual New York and Europe 1931,” Box 348, RG 92, NACP.
605
Undated letter to Ellis from Mrs. Hattie B Bisbee and Mrs. Sarah Parker, Folder “330.1 Pilgrimage
Gold Star 1930,” Box 376, RG 92, NACP.
230
house at St. Mihiel in 1930 after the WOSL convention in Paris. She reported in
Carry On that the St. Mihiel rest house “did much towards bracing up the mothers
after their difficult visit. They all voiced the same sentiments—they were quite
satisfied to go back home leaving their boys in this lovely spot so carefully tended,
and they were more than happy because of all the Government had done for them.” 606
The battle-scarred landscape might have been traumatic for the pilgrims to visit, but
the rest houses tempered that trauma by evoking the comforts of home and providing
a female place of respite.
The stark visual contrast between the small, vernacular rest houses and the
formal, monumental architecture of the ABMC cemeteries and monuments visually
sets out the debate between veteranist-commemorations and physical monuments.
Located on the same landscapes, the rest houses stood out among the formal chapels,
rows of headstones, and triumphant memorials of the ABMC. The monumental
architecture of the ABMC represented a type of formal neoclassicism often utilized in
American civic architecture, and in comparison, the rest houses must have seemed
small and rustic. The cemetery superintendents’ houses and their reception rooms in
the French eclectic style or French Romanesque Revival style, although designed by
architects who practiced in America, had a distinctive European flair compared with
the unpretentious American style of the rest houses (figure 4.13). The rest houses
demonstrated how old and new forms of memorialization coexisted during the
interwar period as commemoration underwent an incomplete transformation. They
606
Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On Periodical Collection, Gift of Carolyn
Habgood, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection, Box 1922-1932, Folder 1931, Volume X, No. 1,
February 1931, 13-14.
231
fulfilled their commemorative purpose only when inhabited with the living bodies of
the pilgrims who took refuge within their walls. Built specifically to be used by
women as they memorialized their loved ones and were honored themselves, these
vernacular rest houses embodied the idea of veteranist-commemorations at a site
dominated by traditional memorials.
Figure 4.13: Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial, Visitor’s Building,
1932. This structure’s stonework and arches evoke the sensibilities of the French
Romanesque Revival style. National Archives, College Park.
The demolition of the rest houses after the pilgrimages erased the visible
evidence of women’s commemorative roles at the cemeteries during the Gold Star
program. Women were never intended to be a permanent part of the narrative told at
the cemeteries. Despite being built to serve and commemorate women, the
destruction of the rest houses demonstrated that women were only temporarily
232
accorded a space on these landscapes. Women’s roles in military commemoration
were often limited, restricted, and ephemeral, especially when so much of women’s
memorial projects constituted intangible veteranist-commemorations and existed
through familial relationships that grew dimmer with the deaths of the war’s
survivors.
Conclusion
The Gold Star pilgrimages constituted veteranist-commemorations conducted at the
request of the Gold Star mothers and widows because of the perceived healing power
of a visit to the overseas cemeteries that held their loved ones. The Gold Star pilgrims
believed that they had served and sacrificed through the wartime deaths of their
children and husbands, and through their decision to bury them in an overseas
American cemetery. They recognized their contributions to the war effort and the
U.S.’s postwar political and diplomatic goals and asked the government to send them
on a trip to those graves. They believed it was the government’s obligation to provide
them with this trip which they felt represented the most appropriate way to
commemorate their service and those they lost.
By agreeing to sponsor and pay for the pilgrimage, the U.S. government
concurred that these Gold Star women served and sacrificed for the nation. They
believed that they deserved official recognition and agreed with the pilgrims’
assertion that the best way to commemorate their services and the lives of their
relatives was not through the construction of a physical memorial, but by sponsoring
233
this pilgrimage. As veteranist-commemorations, the pilgrimages honored the pilgrims
and memorialized their kin through a trip intended to ease their grief.
The Quartermaster Corps went to great lengths to provide the pilgrims with a
meaningful and safe experience. The temporary rest houses they erected for the
pilgrims at several of the ABMC cemeteries represented the physical manifestation of
their efforts to serve the pilgrims and help them heal. But the pilgrimages and the rest
houses relegated women to a separate female realm of military commemoration at the
male-dominated cemeteries. When the rest houses were demolished at the end of the
pilgrimages, the physical evidence of women’s importance to overseas military
commemoration disappeared, demonstrating the temporary inclusion of women in the
historical narrative of military commemoration and the nation itself.
The fact that these buildings no longer exist does not lessen their significance
or that of the pilgrimages they facilitated. The Gold Star pilgrimages played a crucial
role in reorganizing and rearticulating America’s collective mourning and
remembrance of World War One. The money the government spent on the program
during the Great Depression, the extensive press coverage of the trips, and John
Ford’s 1933 Hollywood portrayal of the program showed how effective women had
become in claiming their place at the World War One memory table. 607 In fact, some
Gold Star women even believed they had special authority over the public image of
the pilgrimage. In January 1933, Gold Star mother Katherine M. Gallagher, Mrs.
607
Based on the large number of newspaper clippings found in the Gold Star Pilgrimage records in RG
92, it can be surmised that the Gold Star Pilgrimages received extensive coverage in newspapers across
the country. Numerous boxes within in this record group contain newspaper clippings about the events.
Rebecca Jo Plant’s use of newspaper article also attests to the high level of news coverage focusing on
the pilgrimages.
234
Elizabeth Conley’s friend, wrote to the Fox Film Corporation and asked to be
consulted on John Ford’s film, Pilgrimage, because, she wrote, “the pilgrimage was
very sacred to us and we may not wish to see it commercialized.” 608
The Gold Star pilgrimages demonstrated three crucial points about American
women’s participation in the commemoration of World War One. First, despite being
prohibited from serving in most branches of the military, women influenced the
military in terms of policy-making and commemoration both during and after the
war. 609 Second, the physical evidence of women’s influential roles in the postwar
commemorative culture, such as the rest houses, is often absent from the
commemorative landscape today. And third, some of the most important evidence of
women’s roles in military commemoration was intangible from the start. Conceived
of as a living memorial program to serve the Gold Star pilgrims, the pilgrimages
never fully constituted a bricks and mortar memorial able to stand in perpetuity and
attest to women’s importance in the commemorative discourse. As a type of
veteranist-commemoration implemented by the government, the Gold Star
pilgrimages existed only for a certain moment in time through the lived experiences
of the pilgrims. The memory of these women’s influence diminished with the
removal of the rest houses and the deaths of the pilgrims. As the next chapter shows,
even the more lasting, tangible evidence of women’s roles in the war and its
608
Letter from Mrs. Katherine M. Gallagher to Fox Film, Inc., January 23, 1933, Pilgrimage (Fox, 19-) MPAA/PCA, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library.
609
At the start of WWI, women already served in the Army and Navy as uniformed nurses but they
lacked both enlisted and officer ranking. On March 21, 1917 the Navy announced that women would
officially be able to join the Navy and Marine Corps as Yeoman (F). Ebbert and Hall, The First, the
Few, the Forgotten: Navy and Marine Corps Women in World War I, ix, 1. During World War One,
women also served the nation as volunteers in organizations such as the Red Cross, YMCA, YWCA,
and many others as well as by volunteering on the home front and working in war industries.
235
commemoration, such as their wartime uniforms, received only a temporary inclusion
in the commemorative and historical narrative produced in America’s most prominent
museum.
236
Chapter 5: Exhibiting Veteranist-Commemorations:
American Women’s First World War Uniforms at the
Smithsonian’s National Museum
The National Mall in Washington D.C. contains a unique memorial to American
women’s contributions to the First World War. Unlike the other memorials on the
Mall, this one is not visible to the thousands of tourists who visit the National Mall,
for it is not made of marble or granite, nor is it a structure that occupies a footprint on
‘America’s backyard.’ Rather, this memorial is neatly stored in drawers inside the
Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, hidden from view,
yet still present at this premier repository of American memory.
This memorial is the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America’s
uniforms collection, an artifact collection composed of uniforms and related
ephemera worn by American women during the First World War. In 1919, the
National Society of the Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA) began collecting
examples of these uniforms for an exhibition in the Smithsonian’s National Museum.
The NSCDA created the collection to preserve and commemorate American women’s
wartime service through the acquisition and exhibition of their uniforms.
The NSCDA’s uniforms collection represented an example of another way
that American women commemorated the First World War through veteranistcommemorations. The NSCDA defined this collection and its subsequent exhibition
at the Smithsonian as a memorial that honored American women’s wartime
contributions. By donating their time, resources, and energy to create the collection,
237
the NSCDA performed a service to two intertwined and overlapping constituencies:
the community of women veterans, and the national community. First, the exhibition
served the uniformed American women of the war by commemorating their service
and preserving their history. Second, it served the national community by reminding
the American public about women’s wartime efforts and including that story in the
war’s narrative. The collection also served visitors to the National Museum by
diversifying the World War displays and providing evidence of women’s wartime
services for their education and entertainment.
The NSCDA’s uniforms collection represented a functional memorial with a
distinct public purpose created through the philanthropic acts done by NSCDA and
the artifact donors to serve these different publics. By spearheading this collection
and devoting their time to its execution, the NSCDA developed a veteranistcommemoration project that aimed to include American women in the historical
memory of the First World War. The donors of the uniforms contributed to this
project when they relinquished the physical evidence of their wartime experiences to
preserve the legacy of their service and memorialize their comrades.
Through their donations, this group of women built a memorial made of
material culture. Although the NSCDA might not have understood it at the time, this
memorial collection eschewed the confines of statuary memorials for the versatility of
a museum exhibit. Their actions represented another moment of transition away from
statuary monuments and towards more abstract, purpose-driven memorials.
Because the Smithsonian removed the collection from public display in 1929,
once again women received only a partial and ephemeral inclusion in the historical
238
and commemorative narrative of the First World War. Mirroring their temporary
inclusion in the military apparatus of the war, and at the landscapes of overseas
military memory as demonstrated by the Gold Star Pilgrimages, the uniforms exhibit
testified to the partial and impermanent inclusion of American women into the
historical memory of the First World War.
The Background and Context of the NSCDA Uniforms Collection
Previous studies of the Colonial Dames uniforms collection have discussed the
history and meaning of women’s uniforms in terms of female citizenship and military
service, both during the war and afterwards as part of the NSCDA collection. 610
During the war, Margaret Vining and Bart Hacker asserted:
610
The majority of these studies are by Margaret Vining and Barton C Hacker, two curators in the
Armed Forces History Division of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. This
chapter uses their work as a foundation for its argument. Margaret Vining and Barton C. Hacker,
“Uniforms Make the Woman,” in Materializing the Military. Artefacts VI: Military Technology, ed.
Bernard Finn and Barton C. Hacker (London: Science Museum Press, 2005); 1-12 and Margaret
Vining and Barton C. Hacker, “From Camp Follower to Lady in Uniform: Women, Social Class and
Military Institutions before 1920,” Contemporary European History 10 (2001): 353–73; Barton C.
Hacker, “Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform: The Changing Status of Military Women
(c.1815-c.1914)” in A Companion to Women’s Military History. The author first learned of the
collection through Vining and Hacker’s presentation at “A Century in the Shadow of the Great War:
The International World War I Centennial Planning Conference” at the National WWI Museum at
Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, MO in March 2013. Many thanks to Margaret and Bart for their
support of this dissertation, and especially to Margaret for allowing the author access to the sources
about the collection and providing much advice and support with the chapter. Margaret Vining helped
secure the ultimate donation of the collection to the National Museum of American History in 1997
after years of confusion about the collection’s fate as it remained in the Smithsonian’s storage, yet still
owned by the Colonial Dames. She and Hacker have acted as stewards of the collection and produced
much research on the collection and it meaning. “Deed of Gift: Appendix,” National Museum of
American History Armed Forces History Division (hereafter NMAH), Colonial Dames Collection
Documents, Folder: The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America—1998.0165.
Additionally, Vivian Lea Young, conducted an in-depth study of the individual uniforms in the
collection in her Master’s thesis at George Washington University. Vivian Lea Young, ““Petticoats are
Part of this Uniform:” American Women Volunteers of the First World War and Their Uniforms,”
Master’s thesis, The George Washington University, 1987, Gelman Library Special Collections.
239
by wearing uniforms in voluntary associations, women identified themselves
with the same principles of military order and discipline as men. At the same
time, they reminded government officials and male voters of the gap between
women’s legal rights and the responsibilities as citizens they had willingly
accepted and effectively fulfilled during the war. 611
What differentiated women’s involvement with the military during World War One
from previous conflicts was the mass mobilization required to wage this total war.
Total war expanded women’s participation in new ways so that women of every
social and economic class participated in the war effort. 612 Uniforms distinguished
nurses and other volunteers from lower-class female camp followers, who for
centuries had been attached to armies. 613 By denoting an individual’s membership in
a specific group and distinguishing the wearer from the lower-class, women’s World
War One uniforms signified the status of the women who wore them. 614
When the U.S. officially entered the war, American women donned uniforms
like their British counterparts and the American women already serving in Europe.
These uniforms contained layers of symbolic meaning connected to the history of
women in uniform. 615 Women wore uniforms as part of civilian volunteer relief
611
Vining and Hacker, “Uniforms Make the Woman,” 10.
Vining and Hacker, “From Camp Follower to Lady in Uniform: Women, Social Class and Military
Institutions before 1920,” 360. See also: Hacker, “Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform: The
Changing Status of Military Women (c.1815-c.1914).” Previously, women’s participation in war had
mostly been limited to lower class women such as camp followers and a few elite women in leadership
roles
613
Margaret Vining and Barton C. Hacker, “Volunteers Inspired by Conscription—Uniformed Women
in World War 1,” in The Total War, The Total Defense, 1789-2000, eds. Per Iko, Lars Ericson, and
Gunnar Aselius (Stockholm: Swedish Commission on Military History, 2001), 347. For a discussion of
the history of women’s involvement in the military, women in uniform, and women’s military history
as a field of scholarship see: Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining, eds. A Companion to Women’s
Military History (London: Brill, 2012).
614
Elizabeth Ewing, Women in Uniform Through the Centuries (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd, 1975), 11;
Nathan Joseph, Uniforms and Nonuniforms: Communication Through Clothing (New York:
Greenwood Press, 1986), 1-3; Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard
Howard (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1985), 277, 288.
615
For example, women have used uniforms in religious life, educational institutions, scouting,
nursing, servitude, nanny work, charity work, and sports. See: Ewing, 11-8. For more on the history of
612
240
organizations, contract organizations, the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, and the Navy
Yeoman (F) and Marine Corps Reserve. 616 Often, these organizations used uniforms
to increase women’s standing, since a uniform conveyed an official status and could
help women be taken seriously and respected by male colleagues. 617 These uniforms
shaped the development and performance of women’s identities and also operated as
a form of control, since they required adherence to rules about how they were
worn. 618 They contained underlying sets of values and norms that explained the
relationship of the wearer to the organization to which they belonged, making
uniforms an effective way for hierarchical bureaucracies to exert control over their
members. 619 These uniforms also communicated to non-members and told them about
the wearer’s organizational affiliation, role in the community, their rank and authority
in an organization, and established guidelines for acceptable behavior. 620 When worn
by women, uniforms become complicated by social and gender norms, women’s
positions in their community, and their progress in society. 621 Just as men in uniform
demonstrate notions of perceived masculinity, women in uniform are often seen as
women and military uniforms see: Vining and Hacker, “Volunteers Inspired by Conscription—
Uniformed Women in World War 1;” Barton C. Hacker, “Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform:
The Changing Status of Military Women (c.1815-c.1914);” Jill Halcomb Smith, Dressed for Duty:
America’s Women in Uniform, 1898-1973, 2 vols. (San Jose, California: R. James Bender Publishing,
2001).
616
For examples of women in uniform during World War One see: Jill Halcomb Smith, Dressed for
Duty, Vol. 1.
617
Jennifer Craik, Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to Transgression (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 89.
Additionally, women’s civilian fashions at the time reflected military identity in terms of trims, cut,
and other stylistic features. These garments also demonstrated a visual allegiance to the war effort even
though they were not uniforms. Special thanks to Katelin Lee for pointing this out.
618
Craik, 4-5.
619
Joseph, 2-3.
620
Joseph, 3; Craik, 5.
621
Ewing, 11.
241
crossing gender lines and are viewed within the intertwined concepts of sexuality,
gender, social identity, and political status. 622
Women’s First World War uniforms thus held great significance. During the
war, women’s uniforms symbolized their claims to full citizenship, their patriotism,
their adherence to military discipline, and, implicitly for some women, their desire for
the franchise. 623 These uniforms revealed the changes experienced by American
women during the conflict and contributed to the transformation of women’s fashion
that began in the roaring Twenties. 624 In the immediate postwar years, many former
uniformed women proudly viewed their uniforms as a badge of honor that represented
their wartime service. For this reason, the Women’s Overseas Service League
adopted their old wartime uniforms as their official organizational uniform.
In the postwar era, and even after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment,
commemorations of women’s wartime service continued to deliver the political
messages women’s uniforms sent during the war. By preserving and exhibiting
women’s wartime uniforms at the Smithsonian’s National Museum, the Colonial
Dames used these garments and artifacts to advocate for the expansion of women’s
citizenship rights and inclusion in the military. The exhibition carried uniformed
women’s wartime aims into the postwar public culture.
To gain the most prestigious exposure of the uniforms collection and send its
political messages to large audiences, NSCDA chose to exhibit their acquisitions at
622
Craik, 99.
Vining and Hacker, “From Camp Follower to Lady in Uniform: Women, Social Class and Military
Institutions before 1920,” 360, 371; Vining and Hacker, “Volunteers Inspired by Conscription—
Uniformed Women in World War 1,” 349.
624
Young, 60; James Laver, Costume and Fashion: A Concise History (New York: Thames & Hudson
World of Art, 2002), 229-233.
623
242
the Smithsonian Institution’s United States National Museum. Established in 1846, by
the First World War, the Smithsonian had achieved a national reputation as an
important repository for historical artifacts. 625 From 1919 to 1920, just as the Colonial
Dames began to create their collection, the National Museum underwent a major
reorganization that removed the American history division from the Department of
Anthropology and allotted it more exhibit space in the Arts and Industries
Building. 626 Around the same time as this reorganization, through the cooperation of
the military and the efforts of Smithsonian staff, the Smithsonian acquired a diverse
collection of artifacts from the World War. 627 The collection opened to the public in
November 1918 in the Arts and Industries Building, and by 1920 it included items
such as flags, medals, airplanes, munitions, gas masks, weapons, and official army
art. 628 The Smithsonian leadership valued this collection and exhibited it wherever
they could find room, even as display space became more limited. 629 Eventually, they
incorporated some of the Colonial Dames’ uniforms into these displays.
After the First World War, other museums also developed collections of World
War artifacts as memorial exhibits that commemorated that war. The Smithsonian
625
Smithsonian Institution Archives, “General History,” Smithsonian History, n.d.
<http://siarchives.si.edu/history/general-history> (9 May 2014); William S. Walker, A Living
Exhibition: The Smithsonian and the Transformation of the Universal Museum (Amherst,
Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013), 40-42.
626
Walker, 35-42.
627
Margaret Vining and Barton C. Hacker, “Displaying the Great War in America: The War Exhibition
of the United States National Museum (Smithsonian Institution), 1918 and Beyond,” in The Universal
Heritage of Arms and Military History: Challenges and Choices in a Changing World
(Heeresgeschichtliches Museum: Wien, 2008), 27-32; Walker, 41.
628
Vining and Hacker, “Displaying the Great War in America: The War Exhibition of the United
States National Museum (Smithsonian Institution), 1918 and Beyond, 31-33; Walker, 36-41.
629
The Smithsonian wanted to consolidate the World War collection as a cohesive unit to prevent these
valuable artifacts from being scattered across the country, preventing a coherent narrative of the war
from being preserved in a museum. Walker, 30.
243
recognized the commemorative power of museums, and wanted to transform their own
World War collection into an independent museum that memorialized the conflict,
similar to London’s Imperial War Museum. 630 This national war museum never
materialized, and by 1939, as World War Two began to engulf Europe, all of the First
World War exhibits had been removed, and only a few individual artifacts remained on
display. 631
While the Smithsonian acquired military ephemera from the First World War,
the NSCDA started to procure their own collection of women’s uniforms, beginning
in 1919. 632 Founded in 1891, the NSCDA was a hereditary and patriotic organization
of women whose ancestors lived in Colonial America. 633 Much like the other
hereditary organizations founded in the late nineteenth-century such as the Daughters
of the American Revolution, the Colonial Dames’ membership consisted mostly of
middle and upper-class white women. 634 The NSCDA valued the preservation of
American heritage, national service, and military commemoration. During the
630
In many ways, the Smithsonian was agreeing with what National Museum of American History
curator Stephen Lubar argues is the historian’s power in creating museum exhibits: to use sources and
stories of the past for “commemoration, remembrance, reminiscence, explanation, interpretation, or
analysis. Objects move from keepsake to memento to souvenir to reminder to evidence. Our
presentations move from celebration to memorial to exhibition.” Steven Lubar, “Exhibiting
Memories,” in Exhibiting Dilemmas: Issues of Representation at the Smithsonian, Amy Henderson and
Adrienne L. Kaeppler, eds., (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997); 15-27 (quote on 16).
631
Vining and Hacker, “Displaying the Great War in America: The War Exhibition of the United
States National Museum (Smithsonian Institution), 1918 and Beyond, 37-38. Artifacts from the World
War Collection remained on display only when included with other items such as in an exhibit of
historical American military uniforms.
632
Uniforms make the women, 2.
633
Vining and. Hacker, “From Camp Follower to Lady in Uniform: Women, Social Class and Military
Institutions Before 1920,” 369-371; Vining and Hacker, “Uniforms Make the Woman,” 1.
634
The DAR was founded in 1890. Daughters of the American Revolution, “Who We Are,” Daughters
of the American Revolution, n.d., <http://www.dar.org/national-society/who-we-are> (25 May 2014);
Vining and Hacker, “From Camp Follower to Lady in Uniform”, 369-371, Vining and Hacker,
“Uniforms Make the Woman,” 1; Hacker, “Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform: The Changing
Status of Military Women (c.1815-c.1914),” 157-158.
244
Spanish-American War in 1898, they supported wartime relief efforts. In 1902, they
erected the Spanish-American War Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, a
traditional 54-foot tall commemorative column (figure 5.1). 635 Members of the
NSCDA once again rallied to the war effort during the Great War and numerous
members served in wartime organizations. 636 Many of these women later donated
their uniforms and helped form the core of the collection.
Figure 5.1: View of the northwest corner of the Spanish American War Memorial,
Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein. June 9,
2014.
635
Vining and Hacker, Uniforms Make the Woman, 1-2; “Spanish American War Memorial”
Arlington National Cemetery Find a Grave App,
http://public.mapper.army.mil/ANC/ANCWeb/PublicWMV/ancWeb.html <25 May 2014>.
636
Vining and Hacker, Uniforms Make the Woman, 2.
245
The NSCDA’s uniforms collection represented one example of a much larger
trend of canonizing the history and memory of the Great War in museums, especially
in Great Britain. 637 In addition to various local museums created in Great Britain, in
March 1917, the British War Cabinet established the National War Museum, later
renamed the Imperial War Museum (IWM). 638 The IWM endeavored to preserve,
collect, and exhibit wartime ephemera and provided a place for veterans to visit and
remember their wartime experiences. 639
Almost from its inception, the IWM formed a women’s sub-committee to
include the story of British women in the museum’s narrative. 640 The committee had
two aims: first, to acquire artifacts to exhibit in the IWM, and second, to form a
record of the war that showcased the “activities of women by means of a collection of
photographs, pamphlets and manuscript reports from all women’s organisations and
outstanding private individuals.” 641 Much like the NSCDA, the committee included
women’s uniforms in the collection. 642 The committee also created a record of all
British women who died because of the war, whether during active service near the
637
For an in-depth history of museums and the First World War in Great Britain see: Gaynor
Kavanagh, Museums and the First World War: A Social History (London: Leicester University Press,
1994). For wartime museum closures see pages 36-51, for wartime exhibits see pages 65-81.
638
On British local war museums see: Kavanagh, 103-116. Some proposals for these local museum
even envisioned them as also serving as local memorials, 105, 155-157; Imperial War Museum,
“History of IWM,” Imperial War Museum, n.d. <http://www.iwm.org.uk/corporate/about-IWM> (4
February 2015). For the history of the Imperial War Museum see Kavanagh pgs117-151, 171; on the
name change from the National War Museum to the Imperial War Museum see Kavanagh, 117. The
IWM was later formally established by an Act of Parliament in 1920.
639
Kavanagh, 126, 129.
640
Kavanagh, 138; Mary Wilkinson, “Patriotism and Duty: The Women’s Work Collection at the
Imperial War Museum” Imperial War Museum Review 6 (1991): 31-38.
641
“Subject. Report of the Women’s Section of the Imperial War Museum. May 1s, 1917,-February
23rd 1918” from the “Report of Imperial War Museum 1917-1918,” Folder: EN1/3/GEN/009
Women’s Work Committee Report 1917-1918 Imperial War Museum (IWM) Archives, London.
642
“Women’s Work,” page 10 of “Report of Imperial War Museum 1918-1919;” Folder:
EN1/3/GEN/009 Women’s Work Committee Report 1917-1918; IWM Archives, London.
246
front, in munitions plants, or other circumstances. 643 Extremely active and wellorganized from the outset, even before the IWM had a permanent building, the
committee organized an exhibition of photographs that depicted women’s war work
which they exhibited in October 1918 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. This exhibit
served as a memorial to the women who died in service and demonstrated the early
use of museum exhibits as First World War memorials. 644
The IWM’s Women’s Work Committee is significant in terms of its
similarities and differences compared to the NSCDA’s uniforms collection. Similar to
the NSCDA, this committee was composed of prominent women passionate about the
preservation and commemoration of women’s wartime service. Unlike the NSCDA,
the Women’s Work Committee was formed as an official part of the IWM from the
museum’s inception. It received support and sanctioning from the IWM and it was
considered an integral part of the museum and its mission. The IWM accessioned any
artifacts the Committee acquired into the museum’s permanent collection. This was
not the case with the NSCDA and their uniforms collection. The NSCDA was an
independent organization that developed the idea of the collection on their own and
approached the Smithsonian with a request to use their exhibit space. Their collection
was not owned by the Smithsonian nor was it part of the Smithsonian’s World War
collection; it was considered a distinct entity until it was officially donated to the
Smithsonian in 1997.645
643
Kavanagh, 138.
Kavanagh, 70.
645
“Deed of Gift: Appendix,” Folder: The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America—
1998.0165; Colonial Dames Collection Documents, National Museum of American History Armed
Forces History Division (hereafter NMAH).
644
247
Despite the importance of women’s contributions to the war in both Great
Britain and the U.S., the U.S. did not incorporate women into the narrative of the war
as easily. This could have been because geography separated the U.S. from the
conflict more than in Great Britain, and perhaps made the U.S. felt its effects less
strongly. British women had more opportunities to officially join the armed forces
than American women through the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, the Women’s
Royal Naval Service, and the Women’s Royal Air Force. American women were only
officially permitted in the Navy and Marine Corps and as Army and Navy nurses. 646
Regardless of the American failure to establish a national war museum, other
Americans founded museums dedicated to the war. Most famously, the Liberty
Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri opened in 1926 and included a museum as part of
its memorial complex.647 The American Red Cross also opened a small museum at
their Washington D.C. headquarters in September 1919. Located inside the Memorial
to the Heroic Women of the Civil War, the museum served as a memorial dedicated
to all ARC workers during the First World War. 648 While the museum presented the
entire history of the ARC, many of its exhibits focused on the ARC’s work in the
recent war, especially women’s roles as paid nurses and volunteers. 649 Since women
played such a large role in the ARC’s wartime work, it is not surprising that the ARC
museum privileged women and allotted them space and power in the museum’s
646
Ewing, 90-94.
Derek Donovan, Lest the Ages Forget: Kansas City’s Liberty Memorial, (Kansas City, Missouri:
Kansas City Star Books, 2001), vii, 142.
648
“The American National Red Cross Museum;” Folder: 140.18 Museum Reports of, Pamphlet, July
1926; Box No. 129; RG 200 National Archives Gift Collection, Records of the American National Red
Cross, 1917-1935, 140.18; NACP.
649
Ibid.
647
248
narrative. Unlike at the Smithsonian’s National Museum, women held powerful
leadership positions in the ARC, which enabled them to more easily highlight
women’s wartime service in their exhibits.
Staking a Claim for Women in the National Museum’s Narrative of World War One
The NSCDA selected member Mrs. Carolyn Benjamin to lead the project to create the
uniforms collection. 650 As the wife of Dr. Marcus Mitchell Benjamin, a scientific
editor at the Smithsonian’s United States National Museum, they considered her to be
“especially fitted” for the task. 651 A leader in several organizations, in 1930, Mrs.
Benjamin helped the League of Republican Women organize their “School of
Politics” to prepare women for participation in political campaigns, an activity which
indicated her belief in advancing women’s citizenship. 652 Mrs. Benjamin threw
herself into the uniforms project and secured as many different uniforms as
possible. 653 In 1921 she reported that during the process of obtaining the uniforms,
she wrote 820 letters herself. Assisted by the NSCDA’s Committee on Relics tasked
with helping her, eighty uniforms were ultimately collected and exhibited; one fourth
of these were worn and donated by NSCDA members. 654 This enabled the collection
to speak to the experiences of women outside of the society.
650
“Report of the Committee on Relics Loaned the National Museum, 1919,” in “Minutes of the 14th
Biennial Council of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America,” pg. 69; Folder: NSCDA
Report; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
651
Uniforms make the woman, 1; “Report of the Committee on Relics Loaned the National Museum,
1919,” pg. 69.
652
“G.O.P. “School” for Fair Sex to Start in April,” The Evening Review, 18 February 1920, page 2
<http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/59838128/ > [18 June 2014]
653
“Report of the Committee on Relics Loaned the National Museum, 1919,” pg. 69.
654
“Report of the Committee on Relics, Uniforms of Women Worn During the War, 1921” in
“Minutes of the 15th Biennial Council of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America,” pg.
249
The NSCDA dedicated itself to this project because they understood that the
war represented a watershed moment of change for American women that needed to
be publicly interpreted. 655 Mrs. Benjamin explained that:
while the memory of the splendid deeds of the women can never be forgotten,
still it is seldom that the visible evidences of their work are preserved; for they
soon fade away and are lost forever. It is therefore not surprising that the
National Society of the Colonial Dames of America should have thought it
wise to add to their collection of historic relics now on display at the United
States National Museum in Washington a series of the uniforms worn by
women during the World War. 656
Mrs. Benjamin’s statement, presented to the 15th Biennial Convention of the Colonial
Dames in 1921, demonstrated that the NSCDA recognized the historical importance
of uniformed women. They realized that this story, like so many other stories of
women’s contributions to history, would be lost if they did not take the initiative to
preserve its physical evidence.
Though far from exhaustive, the eighty uniforms in the collection
demonstrated the diversity of women’s wartime activities (figures 5.2, 5.3, and
5.4). 657 To name just a few, the collection included uniforms from: the Young
Women’s Christian Association, the American Fund for French Wounded, the Navy
Yeoman (F), the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, and more than nine different sections of the
American Red Cross. 658 Some uniforms were displayed with photographs or
71, Folder: NSCDA Report, Colonial Dames Collection Documents, NMAH Armed Forces History
Division.
655
“Report of the Committee on Relics, Uniforms of Women Worn During the War, 1921,” 73.
656
Ibid, 73. The NSCDA’s Committee on Relics frequently donated artifacts, especially from the
colonial period and the American Revolution to the Smithsonian. Annual Report of the Board of
Regents of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1921), 155.
657
National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, “Report of the Committee on Relics: Uniforms
of Women Worn During the War,” (Washington, 1922), 1-2; “Uniforms Make the Woman,” 9.
658
“Report of the Committee on Relics: Uniforms of Women Worn During the War,” 17-28.
250
drawings that depicted how they were actually worn. 659 After she surveyed the
contents of the collection, Mrs. Benjamin proudly concluded that:
Some idea may be had of the many philanthropic activities undertaken by the
patriotic women of America, and of their great magnitude. All honor then to
the splendid services, so generously given, for the amelioration of the
suffering conditions of unfortunate humanity, both at home and abroad,
brought about by the great World War. 660
Mrs. Benjamin seemed to recognize that these uniforms demonstrated how the
majority of American women’s wartime contributions encompassed forms of
community service and philanthropic work. Barred from most types of military
service, American women incorporated their traditional expertise in community
service and relief work into the military apparatus; this enabled them to serve despite
gender restrictions and helped their efforts to professionalize these fields. 661 By
commemorating how women’s wartime services involved community service, the
exhibit reminded visitors of women’s support of the war effort and demonstrated that
their service continued in peace time.
659
“Uniforms Make the Woman,” 5.
Ibid, 16.
661
American women had also created voluntary associations in order to serve the country in times of
war during the Civil War, and the actions of the women of the First World War can be directly linked
to the women of the Civil War. Hacker, “Reformers, Nurses, and Ladies in Uniform: The Changing
Status of Military Women (c.1815-c.1914),” 146-148.
660
251
Figure 5.2: Photograph of a display case from the NSCDA uniform exhibition in the
1920s. From left to right: Uniform of the Motor Division, National League for
Women’s Service; Uniforms of Captain of the Motor Corps, National League for
Women’s Service; Uniforms of Major on Staff and Supervisor of Instruction, First
National Service School; and Uniforms of the American Friends Service Committee.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History,
Division of Armed Forces History.
Figure 5.3: Photograph of another display case from the NSCDA uniform
exhibition in the 1920s. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution’s National
Museum of American History, Division of Armed Forces History.
252
Figure 5.4: Photograph of another display case from the NSCDA uniform
exhibition in the 1920s. Drawings of the uniforms as they were worn appear in
between each set of clothing. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution’s
National Museum of American History, Division of Armed Forces History.
The uniforms operated as the physical link to the memory of women’s
wartime services. Like a battlefield or cemetery, they connected historical events to
the present day as lieux de mémoire. 662 With the Western Front so far from the U.S.,
perhaps the NSCDA thought this exhibit could create a pilgrimage site in the U.S., so
that Americans could relate to the war and women’s roles in it. Mrs. Benjamin
elaborated on this further in her 1922 report about the collection. She explained that
through the uniforms collection, “some idea may be had of the many philanthropic
activities undertaken by the patriotic women of America, and of their great
662
Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” 9.
253
magnitude.” 663 The uniforms would form a physical link to the past and would
educate the public about women’s wartime work.
By staking this claim for women in the historical narrative, the NSCDA
honored and commemorated women’s wartime services in a way that was far from
traditional, although they may not have realized it at the time. As an alternative to
erecting a statuary memorial as they did to commemorate the Spanish American War,
the NSCDA used the material culture from women’s service as the memorial objects
that commemorated them and preserved their story. The exhibit subtly implied that
statues alone were no longer sufficient to commemorate a war as horrible as World
War One. These uniforms remembered and celebrated the actual bodies of the women
who wore them, as opposed to the idealized, fictional bodies depicted in statuary
memorials. This exhibit symbolically rejected the aesthetics of the Madonna della
Pietà in favor of an embodiment of real women’s bodies and memories through their
clothing.
The uniforms retained the contours of the bodies of the actual women who
wore them through a realistic corporeality that rejected the romanticized bodies of
statues such as the Pietà and the ARC’s “Spirit of Nursing” memorial. Images of the
exhibit’s display cases show the uniforms simply mounted on a wall and possibly
stuffed with material to hold their shape, rather than being worn on mannequins or
wax figures of fake, unrealistic female forms, although being mounted on the wall
gave them a sense of disuse. Like Anna Coleman Ladd’s portrait masks for disfigured
soldiers, these uniforms constituted a memorial derived from the bodies of the actual
663
“Report of the Committee on Relics: Uniforms of Women Worn During the War,” 16.
254
people who served in the war. The bodies that experienced war became the canvas for
memorial art and helped the viewer internalize the war’s memory. 664 By using
uniforms as an alternative to statues, the NSCDA helped to change commemoration
as it transitioned from being idealistic and lifeless to more realistic and corporeal.
Such cultural transitions are messy, partial, and often unnoticed by those involved, as
may have been the case with this exhibit. Postwar commemoration did not change
completely or all at once; it still included traditional aesthetic influences, as
demonstrated by the “Spirit of Nursing” memorial and the Arlington “Nurses
Memorial.” 665
Other types of related artifacts were also acquired as part of the uniforms
collection. An accession record indicates that a “good cheer bag” became part of the
collection. 666 This “good cheer bag” was an example of one of the thousands sent to
U.S. troops overseas during Christmas in 1917 and 1918 by the Washington D.C.
Women’s Section of the Navy League and its 248 other national chapters. 667 These
bags contained toiletries and small gifts for deployed service members. The “good
664
Perhaps the uniforms exhibit and Ladd’s masks were an early version of what Alison Landsberg
describes as prosthetic memory—the ability through museums and mass culture to take on a memory
that is not one’s own. Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance
in the Age of Mass Culture, 2-3.
665
Arlington National Cemetery, “Nurses Memorial,” Arlington National Cemetery: Explorer, n.d., <
http://public.mapper.army.mil/ANC/ANCWeb/PublicWMV/ancWeb.html> (5 December 2014). My
interpretation here draws on and agrees with Jay Winter’s argument that competing “modernist” and
“traditional” forms of understanding WWI are no longer useful. Rather, Winter argues for “an overlap
of languages and approaches between the old and new, the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern.’” Winter,
Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural; History, 3, 2-5.
666
Accession Record, August 13, 1919, Acc. No. 63960, Folder: National Society of Colonial Dames
Colonial Dames Collection Documents, NMAH Armed Forces History Division; National Committee
on Voluntary Aid of the Women’s Section of the Navy League, “Theodorus Bailey Myers Mason
House of the Women’s Section of the Navy League,” Manual of Voluntary Aid, Second Edition
(Washington D.C.: The National Committee on Voluntary Aid, 1916); 108-113.
667
Ibid; Report on the Committee of Relics, 1992 pg. 16. This particular “good cheer bag” was
donated by Mrs. Julian James of Washington D.C., the honorary Vice-President of the section. Report
on the Committee of Relics, 1992 pg. 16; Manual of Voluntary Aid, Second Edition, pg. 108.
255
cheer bag” acquired for this collection represented an example of American women’s
service work on the home front. The addition of the “good cheer bag” in the
collection alongside the uniforms included the story of the American women who
served on the home front but did not wear a uniform. Additionally, a Women’s
Overseas Service League lapel ribbon was included with an American Friends
Service Committee uniform, perhaps because the donor thought a symbol of her
postwar commitment to national service through the WOSL should be presented
alongside her wartime uniforms (figure 5.5).
Figure 5.5: The Women’s Overseas Service League ribbon included with an
American Friends Service Committee uniform at the National Museum of American
History, Washington D.C. September 3, 2014. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
256
Interspersed among the display cases of predominantly masculine military
artifacts in the Smithsonian’s World War collection, the women’s uniforms, many of
which represented feminine vocations such as nursing, may have reinforced the
notion that women’s involvement with the military should be restricted to jobs related
to their traditional gender roles as mothers and caregivers. It is unclear whether the
NSCDA desired this message to be sent, or whether they intended the exhibit to push
for women’s inclusion in more traditionally male wartime jobs. Their silence on this
topic does not mean that they were apathetic to these issues. 668 Female veteranistcommemorators did not always agree with each other and they may have been
divided about this and other issues.
Mrs. Benjamin had little trouble finding enough women willing to donate their
uniforms to the collection, and she received positive responses from many potential
donors. These women considered it an honor to donate their uniforms and they
understood that their donation helped commemorate their wartime service. In 1921,
Mrs. Florence A. Smith wrote to Mrs. Benjamin to confirm her donation of the
Y.M.C.A uniform she wore at U.S. Government Hospital No. 27 in Parkview,
Pennsylvania, as the chairman of the Y.M.C.A. Committee of the Western District of
France. 669 She enthusiastically told Mrs. Benjamin that her “report was so interesting
that it inspired many of us with a desire to help in any way that we could.” 670 Mrs.
668
For more on meaning of the silence in historical memory see: Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power
and the Production of History.
669
Letter, Mrs. Florence A. Smith to Mrs. Benjamin, June 7, 1921, Folder: National Society of
Colonial Dames, Acc, #66674, Colonial Dames Collection Documents, NMAH Armed Forces History
Division.
670
Ibid.
257
Smith recognized that her donation would not only aid the NSCDA, but also
commemorate her wartime work.
Through their philanthropic donations, women like Mrs. Smith helped the
community of women veterans. By donating their uniforms, she and the other donors
supported the commemoration of women’s wartime roles, if only briefly. Their
donations helped combat the amnesia that could result in the nation’s tendency to
forget women’s wartime contributions. These donors wanted their wartime services to
be remembered and recognized not just for themselves, but also for future generations
of American women who yearned to serve their country.
Even the federal government agreed to donate women’s uniforms to display in
the National Museum. General Orders from the Secretary of War and the Secretary of
the Navy directed the donation of uniforms worn by women in the Navy and the
Marine Corps directly to the Smithsonian, not the NSCDA (figures 5.6, 5.7, and
5.8). 671 These General Orders demonstrated that the War Department and the Navy
recognized the historical importance of these first enlisted women and wanted their
history to be recorded in the National Museum. Even though the Navy and Marines
allowed women to enlist only as an emergency wartime measure and forced them to
be discharged by 1920, they still somewhat valued these women and wanted to
bestow upon them some commemorative honors and help preserve their historical
legacy. 672
671
Letter, Mr. Ravenel to Mrs. Benjamin, March 29, 1919, Folder: National Society of Colonial
Dames, Acc, #65054; Colonial Dames Collection Documents, NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
672
Ebbert and Hall, The First, the Few, the Forgotten: Navy and Marine Corps Women in World War
I, 15, 93-95.
258
Figure 5.6: “Marinettes” on White House Lawn,” c. 1919. Library of
Congress.
Figure 5.7: “Navy Yeoman (F) in white summer dress uniform,” c. 1916-1919
(most likely 1919). Library of Congress.
259
Figure 5.8: “Yeoman (F). Navy Department: Inspection,” 1919. Library of Congress.
The Navy’s support can be understood as another example of the temporary
place accorded to women in military affairs and commemoration. The Navy wanted
women to enlist when they needed them during the war, but they pushed them out of
service afterwards. They wanted to commemorate women, but they did not want them
to be a permanent part of the Navy and Marine Corps. Like the Gold Star pilgrimages
and its temporary rest houses, women were only allotted a fleeting place in the
official American commemorative narrative of the war at the National Museum.
As Mrs. Benjamin established the collection, it did not come together without
its share of challenges and disagreements. While working with Mrs. Benjamin and the
NSCDA, Smithsonian officials tried to ensure that the collection and its exhibition
met their display standards. These professional standards did not include the use of
department store style wax figures to display clothing. This became an issue when the
Emergency Aid of Pennsylvania donated uniforms with wax figures which they
260
requested the uniforms to be displayed upon. 673 The curator of history, Mr. Theodore
Belote, and Mr. Ravenel, an administrative assistant to Smithsonian Secretary Charles
D. Walcott, refused to comply. They had experimented with such wax figures in
previous exhibitions and Mr. Ravenel believed they were “not suited for museum
purposes.” Mr. Belote asserted that they would “appear very much out of place with
all the other historical exhibits.” 674 Ironically, in rejecting the use of the wax figures,
Belote and Ravenel unintentionally helped make the exhibit even more distinct from
the idealized bodies of most female statues.
Mr. Belote also expressed his criticisms and doubts about the collection and
demonstrated his underlying prejudices about including women in the story of the
World War. He wrote to Mr. Ravenel that he “should deeply regret any action which
might in any way, shape, or form bring ridicule or depreciation upon the War
Collection,” referring to his distaste for the wax figures and his fears that they may
decrease the professionalism of the exhibits. 675 He also discussed the uniforms
collection itself, stating that:
Of course, it is clearly understood that the women of the country contributed
very greatly to the winning of the war, but there is a decided feeling in many
quarters that the uniforms now being assembled by Mrs. Benjamin represent
more the personal ideas of the prominent individuals who wore them, rather
than essential service to the Government during this trying period. In view of
these facts I feel that every effort should be made to make this particular
673
Letter, Mr. Warburton to Mr. Ravenel, January 20, 1920, Folder: National Society of Colonial
Dames, Folder: National Society of Colonial Dames Acc. # 65054, Colonial Dames Collection
Documents, NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
674
Letter, Mr. Ravenel to Mrs. Benjamin, January 17, 1920, Folder: National Society of Colonial
Dames Acc. # 65054, Colonial Dames Collection Documents, NMAH Armed Forces History Division;
Letter from Curator to Mr. Ravenel, January 10, 1920; Folder: National Society of Colonial Dames
Acc. # 65054; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division;
“Uniforms Make the Woman”, 2.
675
Letter, Curator to Mr. Ravenel, January 10, 1920; Folder: National Society of Colonial Dames Acc.
# 65054.
Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
261
collection as dignified a one as possible and that special care should be taken
to eliminate anything which might in any way be considered not in harmony
with the serious character of the exhibition. 676
Despite his support for this project, Mr. Belote’s letter revealed his private hesitations
about it. Although he believed women were important to the war effort and deserved
a place in the museum, he doubted whether the NSCDA’s collection actually
showcased women’s contributions or whether it just celebrated the wealthy, elite
women of the NSCDA. His class bias against the NSCDA, though not unfounded,
caused him to devalue the wartime contributions of its members and other women. He
doubted whether their services were actually “essential” to the war effort and the
government. 677 He wanted to vet and supervise the exhibit to make sure it was
professional and historically significant enough for the National Museum. This
incident demonstrates his gender and class biases against the NSCDA. Even as the
NSCDA created this collection to stake a claim for women in the history and memory
of the war, the men who supposedly supported their project quietly challenged its
underlying purpose.
Mrs. Benjamin seemed to recognize that these biases existed and she tried to
combat their effects. In dealing with the issue of the wax figures, she wrote Mr.
676
Ibid.
Belote seems to have exhibited a pattern of claiming that he wanted underrepresented groups
included in the Smithsonian’s collections but acting differently and using space limitations as
justification for their exclusion. For example, when the daughter of Sergeant Christian Fleetwood, an
African-American soldier who won the Medal of Honor in the Civil War, offered the medal to the
National Museum in 1947, Belote objected to the accessioning of the artifact. He claimed to support
the inclusion of African-American military objects in the collection but said they lacked storage and
display space, a claim that scholar Richard Kurin disputes as false. Kurin argues that Belote was more
concerned about the political message displaying the artifact might have sent. Richard Kurin, The
Smithsonian’s History of American in 101 Objects (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013), 228-229.
However, Belote did accept the suffragist collections of Carrie Chapman Catt and Susan B. Anthony.
Bird, 41.
677
262
Ravenel about her fears that the uniforms from the Emergency Aid of Pennsylvania
would not be included in the collection because of this miscommunication. 678 She
believed this would be a great loss to the collection because these uniforms “properly
belong in the exhibit, if it is to be an historic one; which is the aim and purpose of our
Society.” 679 Mrs. Benjamin’s emphasis on the exhibit’s historical purpose and the
Society’s historical intentions—she even underlined the word “historic”—
demonstrated that she knew she had to vouch for the collection’s historical
legitimacy. She must have recognized some of the doubts of the Smithsonian staff;
perhaps she even heard about these concerns through her husband. She felt she
needed to justify the collection’s mission and prove that it should be taken seriously
and included in the National Museum.
Despite the undertones of sexism in Mr. Belote’s letter, some of his suspicions
about the motives of the “prominent individuals” involved with the NSCDA deserve
consideration. Not all of the uniforms in the collection were worn by members of the
NSCDA, but as the organizers of the collection, the NSCDA had control over who
was contacted to donate their uniform and whose donations were accepted. This
meant that the class and race biases of the NSCDA affected the collection. Mr. Belote
may not have been that far off when he insinuated that many of the uniforms in the
collection represented prominent individuals of the same upper and middle-class
backgrounds as NSCDA members. It was to these women’s advantage to present a
narrative that showed wealthy, white American women who selflessly served their
678
Letter, Mrs. Benjamin to Mr. Ravenel, January 11, 1920; National Society of Colonial Dames Acc.
#65054; Colonial Dames Collection Documents NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
679
Ibid.
263
country. In reality, most women who served in uniform, especially those who went
overseas, were actually from working-class backgrounds. 680 This class bias from
NSCDA members was not completely overwhelming, though, since the collection
contained uniforms worn by groups composed of women from a variety of
backgrounds, including the YMCA, YWCA, and canteen workers who mostly came
from the working class. 681 Even so, some examples of these uniforms were donated
by socially prominent members of the NSCDA such as the YWCA Canteen Worker’s
uniform donated by Miss Virginia Armistead Nelson, a member from the Tennessee
Society who was also a WOSL member. 682
Diversity in terms of race, ethnicity and religion could only ever be partially
achieved in the collection because of the exclusivity in the recruitment of uniformed
women during the war. 683 Wartime policies deliberately excluded African-American
women from almost all uniformed service opportunities. Jewish women and recent
immigrants were also discouraged, and although some African-American and Jewish
women served in uniform, most wartime organizations believed that the ideal woman
for uniformed service was white, Christian, and native-born. 684 The collection
included a uniform from the Jewish Welfare Board but none that represented any of
the few uniformed African-American women. The collection also completely
excluded the story of African-American women’s non-uniformed wartime service. 685
680
“Report on the Committee on Relics,” 2; Zeiger, 31, 40.
“Report on the Committee on Relics”; Zeiger, 39-41.
682
“Report on the Committee on Relics”, 11.
683
Zeiger, 27-28. Virginia Armistead Nelson’s name appears in several membership rosters of the
WOSL. Box 1922-1932 and Box: 1933-1939, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On
684
Zeiger, 27.
685
Report on the Committee on Relics,” 12, 24.
681
264
Overall, the biases of the collection portrayed a complicated message that Mr. Belote
picked up on. While the NSCDA certainly attempted to make the collection inclusive
in terms of the wartime organizations that women joined, the realities of women’s
wartime service, and the NSCDA’s possible motives for self-advancement, resulted in
a collection that retained these biases and served the needs of the NSCDA members
first, even as they tried to include American women in the historical narrative of the
war.
Denied Display: The Temporary Inclusion of the NSCDA Uniforms Collection in the
Smithsonian’s United States National Museum
By 1920, the collections in the Division of History at the Smithsonian’s United States
National Museum had expanded so much with the World War collection that space
was limited and officials wanted a new building just to house the history collection. 686
But without any prospects for a new building, in 1929 the Division of History
rearranged its exhibitions to present a more coherent narrative of American history. 687
This rearrangement moved most of the World War collection out of the Natural
History Building and into the Arts and Industries Building. 688 During this
rearrangement, curators had to decide which parts of the collections were important
enough to remain on display in the limited space that remained. Thus, in 1929, eleven
years after the Armistice and ten years before the almost complete elimination of the
686
Walker, 42.
Ibid.
688
Ibid.
687
265
World War exhibits, the Smithsonian removed the Colonial Dames uniforms
collection from public display. In fact, the Smithsonian had previously asked the
NSCDA to stop collecting material since there was no longer room to display the
garments and the collection had outgrown its allotted cases. 689
Mr. Belote wrote to Mr. Ravenel and suggested that they alert the NSCDA of
this change and ask whether they would like the collection returned or placed in
storage. 690 In this letter, Mr. Belote justified the removal of the uniforms and exposed
his biases against the historical importance of these garments. He wrote that “the
costumes to which I refer above are not of primary historical or scientific interest and
the space which they now occupy is urgently needed for the accommodation of
material of very much greater value which is to be removed from the Natural History
Building and installed in this building.” 691 The choice to relocate the exhibits of First
World War artifacts meant there was no longer room to display the uniforms,
although it is not clear what material was considered to be more valuable than the
uniforms.
In this frank letter, Mr. Belote revealed that he did not consider women’s
uniforms to be artifacts of primary historical importance worthy enough to be
exhibited in the limited space allotted to the Division of History. Whether he held this
opinion because the war remained a recent memory, because he did not value
689
Letter, Mr. Belote to Mr. Ravenel, March 9, 1929; Folder: National Society of Colonial Dames,
Acc, #65054;
Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division; “Report of the
Committee on Relics Loaned the National Museum,” 1927.
690
Letter, Mr. Belote to Mr. Ravenel, March 9, 1929. For more on Belote’s work with the National
Museum’s historical collections see: William L. Bird, Jr., Souvenir Nation: Relics, Keepsakes, and
Curios from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2013), 40-42.
691
Ibid.
266
women’s roles in the war, or because growing isolationist and pacifist sentiments in
the U.S. discouraged a display of women’s militarism, he did not say. 692 Although
Mr. Ravenel had previously expressed his regret to the NSCDA about the necessity of
taking down the exhibits, he too agreed with Mr. Belote and considered the
reorganization of the exhibition space to be a higher priority. 693 Mr. Belote’s attitude
rejected the conception of the exhibit as a memorial that commemorated women’s
wartime services since he did not validate the importance of its public display.
The removal of the women’s uniforms from public exhibition did not go
unnoticed by the women who donated their belongings to the collection. The donors’
reactions to the collection’s removal revealed the commemorative mission that these
women and the NSCDA believed the exhibit could accomplish. Although they did not
always explicitly refer to the collection as a memorial, NSCDA President Theresa
M.N. Hutchinson described it as a memorial when she dealt with a request from one
of the women who complained about its removal. Like several other donors, Mrs.
John B. Hammond visited the National Museum in 1936 or 1937 and became upset
when she discovered that the entire collection had been taken down. As she looked
into the issue, she also learned that contrary to her understanding, the NSCDA owned
692
For a further discussion of isolationism in the 1920s and 1930s see chapter six. See also: Daniela
Rossini, “Isolationism and Internationalism in Perspective: Myths and Reality in American Foreign
Policy,” in From Theodore Roosevelt to FDR: Internationalism and Isolationism in American Foreign
Policy, Edited by Daniela Rossini (Staffordshire, England: Ryburn Publishing, Keele University Press,
1995); 11-23, 113; Leroy N. Rieselbach, The Roots of Isolationism: Congressional Voting and
Presidential Leadership in Foreign Policy (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966), 3, 913; John E. Wiltz, From Isolationism to War, 1931-1941 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company,
1968); Manfred Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1935-1941 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1966); Ronald E. Powaski, Toward an Entangling Alliance: American Isolationism,
Internationalism, and Europe, 1901-1950 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991).
693
Letter, Mr. Ravenel to Mrs. Frazer, March 13, 1929; Folder: ACC #65054; Colonial Dames
Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
267
the collection and not the Smithsonian. In March 1937, she wrote to Dr. Wetmore, the
director of the National Museum, and requested that he contact the NSCDA and ask
that her items be returned to her. 694
The issue of Mrs. Hammond’s donation had already come to the attention of
the NSCDA in 1936. In a letter to Mrs. Benjamin that discussed Mrs. Hammond’s
situation, Mrs. Hutchinson expressed her admiration of Mrs. Benjamin’s work
establishing the collection, which she believed to be “a very valuable historical
possession always, as it is now.” 695 Mrs. Hutchinson explained to Mrs. Benjamin that
she could not authorize her to return Mrs. Hammond’s items, or any part of the
collection, since these items were now the property of the NSCDA. 696 Specifically,
Mrs. Hutchinson thought that returning individual items from the collection would be
detrimental to the collection as a whole. She believed that each part of the collection
“is of value, showing the effect of the uniforms, the hat, etc., while worn by the
person to whom it belonged. I feel that the photograph showing the whole effect of
the uniform is important.” 697 She valued the collection in its fully assembled state and
believed it would lose historical value if individual items were removed. She wanted
the story of uniformed women to be comprehensively depicted and contextualized by
using the artifacts of the women who actually wore the uniforms on display.
694
Smithsonian Institution Archives, “Secretaries of the Smithsonian,” Smithsonian History, n.d.
<http://siarchives.si.edu/history/secretaries-smithsonian> (7 December 2014);
Smithsonian Institution Archives, “Alexander Wetmore,” Smithsonian History, n.d
<http://siarchives.si.edu/history/alexander-wetmore> (7 December 2014).
695
Letter, Mrs. Hutchinson to Mrs. Benjamin, June 16, 1936; Folder: National Society of Colonial
Dames, Acc, #66674; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
696
Ibid.
697
Ibid.
268
Mrs. Hutchinson tried to appease Mrs. Hammond and expressed the NSCDA’s
appreciation of her donation. She explained that “Mrs. Hammond’s name would
always be attached to the uniform and kept in our archives,” which would ensure that
her contribution would remain connected to her name and tell the story of her
wartime experience. 698 Here, Mrs. Hutchinson explicitly described the NSCDA’s
intention that collection serve as a monument to women’s wartime service. “The
gift,” Mrs. Hutchinson wrote, “is a permanent memorial to her [Mrs. Hammond’s]
generosity and her war service, and is much safer in our hands that in those of a
private person. Though, of course, she may not realize that.” 699
Mrs. Hutchinson expressed the Society’s intentions, perhaps unarticulated or
understated until this time, that the uniforms collection would serve as a permanent
memorial to the uniformed women who served during World War One. Rather than
erecting a grand monument like their Spanish-American War Monument in their
honor, the NSCDA commemorated these women through the clothing they actually
wore during the conflict. As a utilitarian memorial, this collection served a dual
purpose. First, it commemorated women’s service, and second, it helped include these
women’s wartime experiences in the historical and commemorative narrative of the
war. By using artifacts as a physical memorial, the uniforms collection provided proof
of women’s wartime services. As part of the collection, the individual uniforms and
other relics would be protected and preserved in perpetuity. The collection would
698
699
Ibid.
Ibid.
269
help ensure that the stories of the women associated with these objects would not be
completely lost, as they might have been if they remained in private hands.
When she said that Mrs. Hammond might not realize how much safer her items
would be as part of the collection, Mrs. Hutchinson recognized the abstractness of
this form of memorial, the purpose of which might not be clearly understood and
recognized by everyone. Although the uniforms collection did not outwardly
proclaim its status as a memorial, that did not negate its memorial function or the
NSCDA’s intention that would serve as a memorial. Much like other type of
veteranist-commemorations performed by women during the interwar period, this
memorial rejected traditional bricks and mortar monuments in favor of a more subtle,
useful, and performative multi-purpose type of commemoration.
Mrs. Hammond complained so persistently about the situation with her uniform
because she understood its importance to preserving the legacy of women’s service in
World War One. In her letters to Dr. Wetmore that asked for the return of her uniform
if it was not displayed, she used the uniform’s importance as justification for her
request and her disdain that it had not been donated to the National Museum. She
begged Dr. Wetmore to assist her in reclaiming her uniform from the NSCDA. She
told him: “I do so want it back. My uniform at present is in storage in the Division of
History and might as well be stored in my own trunk.” 700 Frustrated with the
situation, Mrs. Hammond did not see the value in her precious belongings remaining
700
Letter, Mrs. John B. Hammond to Dr. Wetmore, March 15, 1937; Folder: National Society of
Colonial Dames, Acc, #66674; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History
Division.
270
in storage, unable to be seen by the public. If the items were not a part of the National
Museum’s collection as she intended, she preferred to retain them herself.
Mrs. Hammond did not value the NSCDA and their authority over the collection.
She viewed the respected National Museum as the only legitimate home for her items
if she herself could not have them. She explained to Dr. Wetmore that, “as you know,
enlisting women in the Naval Reserve may never occur again in our history and it
does seem such a shame the national collections will be minus these specimens.” 701
Mrs. Hammond understood and appreciated the value of her uniform and artifacts just
as much as the NSCDA. Unlike the NSCDA, who thought this made it critical for
their organization to keep the items, Mrs. Hammond preferred the prestigious
National Museum to retain and care for her donations. Despite this difference in
opinion, Mrs. Hammond and the NSCDA agreed on one fundamental premise: the
uniforms worn by American women during the war, in particular this Yeoman (F)
uniform, were essential to preserving the story of these women’s experiences
In pointing out that enlisting women in the Naval Reserve might not happen again
in U.S. history, Mrs. Hammond recognized the importance of women’s first brief
foray into official enlisted uniformed military service. She understood the
significance of this event for American women’s roles as citizens and their struggles
for greater independence and equality. She also understood this event to be an
aberration necessitated by the war. She realized that the U.S. government might not
need to enlist women in the Naval Reserve again. Without the extenuating
circumstances of a global, mechanized war that required large amounts of labor,
701
Ibid.
271
American women might not be given another chance to prove their mettle in official
military service. Little did she know that in just a few years, another global war
would begin, and once again American women would be called to serve in uniform,
although this time the timidity of the First World War would be somewhat improved
with the creation of the WAVEs and the WAACs.
Mrs. Hammond predicated the preservation of the memory of her service on the
condition that her uniform must be owned and exhibited by the National Museum. If
her uniform remained in storage, Mrs. Hammond believed that her donation stopped
serving its purpose. She thought it lost value if the NSCDA owned it and not the
National Museum. She recognized that the history of the Yeoman (F) could easily be
forgotten and she believed that exhibiting her uniform and ceding it to the National
Museum could act as an antidote to that amnesia. Mrs. Hammond’s dissent
demonstrates yet again that female veteranist-commemorators did not unanimously
agree about the best way to commemorate their service.
To a non-museum professional, storing such a valuable artifact could be seen as a
waste, but Mrs. Hammond misunderstood what the Colonial Dames correctly
perceived: just by collecting the uniforms as part of a museum collection, the history
of uniformed women’s service could be preserved for the long term. Keeping the
uniforms in an official museum collection, whether owned by the NSCDA or the
National Museum, preserved and cared for them under contemporary museum
standards. They gained a special status as historical artifacts and by remaining in
storage they survived to teach later generations of Americans about their history.
272
Mrs. Hammond was not the only donor to react so negatively to the removal
of the collection from display. After hearing from her brother, who visited the
Smithsonian in the fall of 1930, that her uniform from the American Fund for French
Wounded was no longer exhibited, in February 1931, WOSL member Lucy K.
Shaffer wrote to the museum and requested its return. 702 She explained that if it was
no longer on view, she “should like to have my uniform back, to keep as a
souvenir.” 703 In response to her request, Mr. Ravenel explained that only the NSCDA
had the authority to return items in the collection to their donors. 704 In an attempt to
justify the removal of the collection from exhibition, Ravenel told her how, “owing to
necessary changes in the Museum’s exhibit due to our greatly crowded condition, it
was necessary to remove this collection and place it in storage.” 705 Like Mrs.
Hammond, Lucy Shaffer seemed disappointed that her uniform had been removed.
From her perspective, having her uniform back as a souvenir might at least allow her
to commemorate her service in her own way, as opposed to having the proof of her
wartime experiences locked in storage.
Unable to assist the donors in retrieving their uniforms because they were the
property of the NSCDA, Smithsonian officials asked the NSCDA to reclaim the
collection. In March 1937, after the Mrs. Hammond debacle, the curator, Mr. Belote,
702
Shaffer’s name appears in several membership rosters of the WOSL. Box 1922-1932 and Box:
1933-1939, Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL) Carry On Periodical Collection, Gift of
Carolyn Habgood, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
703
Letter from Lucy K. Shaffer to the Smithsonian, February 21, 1931; Folder: National Society of
Division.
704
Letter from Ravenel to Lucy K. Shaffer, March 11, 1931; Folder: National Society of Colonial
Dames, Acc, #66674; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division;
Letter, Charles Carey to Mr. Belote, December 31, 1942; Folder: National Society of Colonial Dames,
Acc, #66674; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
705
Letter from Ravenel to Lucy K. Shaffer, March 11, 1931.
273
wrote to Dr. Wetmore about the status of the uniforms collection. The uniforms had
been in storage since the World War collection had been transferred from the Natural
History Building to the Arts and Industries Building. 706 He expressed his concerns
that:
objects of this type deteriorate rapidly in storage regardless of the care that
may be given them and these uniforms will, if left in storage for a few years
longer, inevitably deteriorate to a marked degree. I think that the attention of
the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America should be called to
this fact and that the Society should be asked to relieve the National Museum
of any further responsibility for the preservation of this material.” 707
Mr. Belote did somewhat value the uniforms collection and he worried about its
condition. But he also realized that as long as the National Museum retained the
collection, it remained uncomfortably accountable. The museum could not return the
artifacts to donors since it did not own them, nor could they display the collection or
guarantee its safety in storage. It seemed best to ask the NSCDA to repossess the
collection and take charge of its long-term care.
Dr. Wetmore agreed with Mr. Belote and wrote to the NSCDA on April 19,
1937 to ask them to consider removing the collection from the Smithsonian and
storing it themselves. Dr. Wetmore explained that the Smithsonian felt that “with
museum facilities that have been arranged recently in connection with your work you
may wish to have the material shown where it can be enjoyed by the public. I am
moved to make this suggestion in part by the fact that there has been request[s] on
several occasions recently for the withdrawal of part of this material by the original
706
Letter from Belote to Wetmore, March 17, 1937; Folder: National Society of Colonial Dames, Acc,
#66674; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
707
Ibid.
274
owners. This puts the National Museum in a somewhat difficult position.” 708
Although Dr. Wetmore wrote the letter to extricate the National Museum from the
awkward situations with Mrs. Hammond and Lucy Shaffer, Dr. Wetmore, like Mr.
Belote, also seemed concerned about the collection’s condition, despite their
underlying doubts about its importance.
Although women’s uniforms had been allotted exhibition space in the
museum for nine years, and although these Smithsonian officials professed to care
about the collection’s safety and public display, the collection was still not considered
important enough to constitute a permanent exhibition as the NSCDA had intended.
The Smithsonian only temporarily displayed the uniforms to supplement their larger
collection of masculine wartime artifacts. That the Smithsonian itself did not collect
the uniforms or seek them out indicated that the Smithsonian’s male leadership did
not originally envision women’s uniforms to be such an important part of the
permanent collection they acquired for the proposed national war museum. Rather,
the uniforms had to be obtained by a women’s organization to become a museum
collection. Again, women were only temporarily given space in the commemorative
and historical narrative of the war. Female groups like the NSCDA had to fight for
women’s inclusion in the war’s history, but they only achieved partial success.
Ultimately, like the Gold Star pilgrimage rest houses, the exhibition was taken down
and the memory of women’s roles in the war and its commemoration receded from
public memory.
708
Letter Dr. Wetmore to Mrs. Harry Horton Benkard, April 19, 1937; Folder: National Society of
Division.
275
The NSCDA eventually took the Smithsonian up on their offer to pack the
collection in moth-proof cases and store it more safely until the NSCDA could figure
out what to do with it. 709 In 1931, the NSCDA Committee on Relics began working
on the issue. They contemplated the complicated process it would entail to move the
uniforms, since each donor would have to be contacted for their permission, and they
decided to leave the uniforms at the National Museum until a final decision could be
reached. 710 In the 1931 report of the Committee on Relics, the new chairman,
Elizabeth Van Rensselaer Frazer, discussed the uniforms and explained that “their
value being more sentimental than intrinsic, they would probably be fairly safe at
Bellevue because they would not be so liable to theft as the valuable heirlooms that
are now down in the museum.” 711 Despite her concern for the collection’s safety,
Frazer seemed to value the collection’s historical purpose less than her predecessors
on the committee, as evidenced by how she called its value “sentimental.” Frazer took
over the committee in 1927 from Mrs. Benjamin after the collection’s completion. 712
During the war, Frazer served as the chairman of the Women’s Committee of the
Navy League and supported sailors through service work on the home front, such as
709
Minutes of the Nineteenth Biennial Council of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of
America, “Report of the Committee on Relics Loaned to the National Museum, 1929”; Folder:
NSCDA Report; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
710
Minutes of the Twentieth Biennial Council of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of
America, “Report of the Committee on Relics Loaned to the National Museum, 1931; Folder: NSCDA
Report; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
711
Ibid. Bellevue is the old name for Dumbarton House, the NSCDA’s headquarters in Washington
D.C. A restored Federal era mansion, the NSCDA has operated it as a museum since 1932. “NSCDA,
“Dumbarton House, Chronology,” Dumbarton House, n.d. <http://dumbartonhouse.org/residents> (7
December 2014).
712
Minutes of the Eighteenth Biennial Council of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of
America, “Report of the Committee on Relics Loaned the National Museum,” 1927.
276
the “good cheer bags.” 713 She later served as the chairman and founder of the Belleau
Wood Memorial Association, which sought to rebuild the French village of Belleau
and construct a memorial to the Americans who fought there, a hybrid form of
veteranist-commemoration that involved community service and historic
preservation. 714 Because of her background, Mrs. Frazer probably understood and
appreciated the collection’s memorial purpose and importance. Yet she still seems to
have undervalued its importance as historical evidence of women’s wartime roles and
its function as a memorial. As time passed since the war, it seemed that even some
female veteranist-commemorators lost sight of the collection’s importance and
memorial functions.
The matter of the collection’s future was soon taken up again by Mrs.
Benjamin, at the urging of Mrs. Hutchinson. 715 In 1939, Mrs. Benjamin admitted that
the uniforms had been “exhibited in a very prominent aisle for twelve years or more.
Museums do not keep their exhibits static; changes must be made to allow space for
the continuous showing of new deposits.” 716 Mrs. Benjamin felt that despite their
intentions for a permanent display, the exhibit had been a success, especially since
Dr. Wetmore emphasized to her that “because the exhibit was a very historical one”
the museum would gladly accept it as a donation. 717 But, acquiescing to Mrs.
713
“Funeral Rites Held for Mrs. Frazer,” The Washington Post (Washington D.C.), September 24,
1949, B2, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
714
Ibid; “Plans to Rebuild Belleau,” The New York Times (New York, NY), June 5, 1922, 9, ProQuest
Historical Newspapers; “Foch Aids American Belleau Wood Plan,” The New York Times (New York,
NY), October 17, 1921, 5, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
715
Minutes of the Twenty-Fourth Biennial Conference of the National Society of the Colonial Dames
of America, “Report on the Exhibiting of a Collection of Uniforms of Women, Worn in the World
War, 1914-1918,” 1939, pg. 42-32; Folder: NSCDA Report; Colonial Dames Collection Documents;
NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
716
Ibid, 65.
717
Ibid, 66.
277
Hutchinson’s request to find the uniforms a “worthy” home where they would be
displayed, Mrs. Benjamin investigated other alternatives. 718 She considered all sorts
of options such as the Fort Ticonderoga Museum, the War Department’s displays at
upcoming expositions, and the recently completed War Memorial Museum at the
Indiana War Memorial. 719 She received some encouragement from these institutions,
such as from the leader of the Fort Ticonderoga Museum who urged her not to
relinquish the uniforms or separate the collection because, owing to their great
historic value, they would grow in interest and value as the years passed. 720 A
Colonel from the War Department wanted to display the uniforms alongside the War
Department’s displays at expositions in San Francisco and New York, but to his
disappointment the officials in charge of the expositions would not grant him the
extra space. 721 Despite these instances of encouragement, Mrs. Benjamin had trouble
getting definite responses from the forty-one letters she mailed in her quest to find a
museum to exhibit the uniforms. 722 It is significant that Mrs. Benjamin agreed to
return to this difficult project and try to find the collection a suitable home. Unlike
Frazer, she still saw great value in the collection and understood that its historical and
memorial purpose was undermined when it was not accessible to the public.
In spite of her best efforts, Mrs. Benjamin did not succeed in finding a place
to display the uniforms and they remained in storage. Her failure to secure a new
home for the collection does not represent a failure on her part. Rather, these
718
Ibid, 66.
Ibid, 66-68.
720
Ibid, 66.
721
Ibid 66-67.
722
Ibid. 66.
719
278
institutions failed to recognize the value of the collection and denied women a stable
place in the public narrative of the war. Now that time had passed since the war, their
story no longer resonated in U.S. society, and it would not resonate again until the
Second World War.
Conclusion: The Second World War and the Legacy of the NSCDA Uniforms
Collection
Despite the setbacks she encountered while trying to find another place to exhibit the
collection, Mrs. Benjamin did not abandon her efforts, although it became
increasingly difficult as war broke out in Europe again. In 1941, she reported to the
NSCDA that while she continued to look for a place for the collection, “the
uncertainty of world affairs” in Europe had “tended to make the heads of all
institutions such as libraries, art galleries, museums, etc., careful about assuming
responsibility by accepting the trust.” 723 In fact, she explained how Mabel Boardman
of the ARC probably would have accepted the collection for the Red Cross Museum,
but due to the preparations for the U.S.’s possible entrance into the war, every space
at the ARC Headquarters, which included the Memorial Building to the Women of
the World War, had been turned over to war relief work. 724 But Mrs. Benjamin also
saw another side to the current situation and she explained to the council that, “should
we be drawn into the European war, the National Society would probably wish to
723
Minutes of the Twenty-Fifth Biennial Council of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of
America, “Report on the Collections of Uniforms of Women Worn During the Great War, 1914-1918,”
59-60; Folder: NSCDA Report; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History
Division.
724
Ibid, 60.
279
supplement at its close, the present complete collection with another, which would
probably be of an entirely new type, after a lapse of twenty-five years.” 725
Mrs. Benjamin realized that with war brewing, a new generation of American
women might be put into uniformed service. Until this point, the uniforms collection
had been unique in that World War One was the first time that large numbers of
American women had performed uniformed wartime service. 726 Another war might
continue that trend and create the need to celebrate the first generation of women in
uniform alongside the new generation. She understood that times had changed and
that these women would be quite different, but nonetheless she was already thinking
of ways to maintain a place for the women of the First World War in the historical
narrative and to include the women of the Second World War in their ranks. Although
this expansion of the uniform collection did not happen, Mrs. Benjamin’s musings
were quite similar to those of the WOSL and the American War Mothers, who
eventually allowed World War Two women into their organizations.
Mrs. Benjamin also correctly understood the value of the collection to the
U.S. once the nation entered the Second World War. In 1942, The Saturday Evening
Post contacted Dr. Wetmore and asked for access to the uniforms collection. 727 The
Saturday Evening Post intended to publish a four-page color spread about women’s
uniforms in both World Wars to help the War Department’s recruiting efforts. 728 The
War Department supplied the paper with examples of current women’s uniforms, but
725
Ibid, 60.
A Companion to Women’s Military History, 2.
727
Letter, R.F. Garland to Dr. Wetmore, December 12, 1942; Folder: National Society of Colonial
Dames Acc. #63960; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division.
728
Ibid.
726
280
they had not been able to find complete uniforms from the First World War. 729 With
the Colonial Dames’ permission, they sent fashion historian Mrs. Helen Virginia
Meyer to the Smithsonian to study the uniforms. They used her sketches alongside
drawings of women’s World War Two uniforms for an original color spread and
materials used for a Treasury Department War Bond Drive (figure 5.9). 730
Figure 5.9: The “Women of Two Wars” article that appeared in The Saturday
Evening Post. Illustrations by Helen Virginia Meyer and photographs by Elliot
Clarke. The Saturday Evening Post 215, no. 48 (May, 1943):26-27. Academic Search
Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 6, 2015). Copyright The Saturday Evening
Post and the Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society.
729
Ibid.
Letter, Mr. R.F. Garland to Dr. Wetmore, December 23, 1942; Folder: National Society of Colonial
Dames Acc. #63960; Colonial Dames Collection Documents; NMAH Armed Forces History Division;
“Women of Two War,” The Saturday Evening Post 215, no. 48 (May, 1943):26-27. Academic Search
Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed March 6, 2015).
730
281
This incident demonstrated that the NSCDA collection succeeded in at least
one of its goals: the preservation of women’s First World War uniforms for historical
purposes. That The Saturday Evening Post had trouble securing complete uniforms
indicated that by 1942, these uniforms were scarce and probably not well preserved.
The use of these uniforms alongside World War Two uniforms as part of an appeal to
help the war effort also held great significance. The Post viewed the women of the
current war as connected to the women of the last war. They recognized that they
inherited their legacy and built off of their advances, a sentiment expressed by many
female veteranist-commemorators. Additionally, the use of women’s images to help
raise funds for war bonds and to recruit more uniformed women indicated that
women’s wartime contributions were desired and valued. Women needed to do their
bit, and they were recognized as a demographic that must be reached to advance U.S.
war aims. Even though women were not granted the same rights to serve as men, the
Second World War opened up even more opportunities for women’s service than the
last war, and uniformed women were seen not as an aberration but as a necessity. In
this regard, the collection successfully demonstrated the importance of these first
ladies in uniform and revived their memory, even though it took another world war
and a new generation of women in uniform to do so.
By commemorating women’s wartime service through the preservation and
exhibition of women’s uniforms, the NSCDA made a wise and prescient choice. They
demonstrated women’s patriotism and their desire to serve in the military. They
helped record and preserve the story of America’s uniformed women in the First
World War. Although the collection did not remain on display permanently, the
282
NSCDA ensured the preservation of these women’s stories since the collection
survived and is now under the perpetual care of the Smithsonian.
As a form of veteranist-commemoration, philanthropy and service to female
veterans formed the core of this project. The collection came to fruition because of
the female veterans who donated their uniforms. Through their generosity, these
women contributed to the larger mission of staking a claim for women in the war’s
commemorative narrative. Although their success sometimes seemed ephemeral in
the interwar years when the exhibition was removed from display, their donations
were not in vain. Today, we are able to study the collection and fulfill the historical
and commemorative missions of the NSCDA. The collection occupies a hidden yet
important place on the National Mall, where it continues to operate as a memorial to
American women’s wartime service. The memory of American women’s veteranistcommemorations also lives on today through the film Gold Diggers of 1933. Like the
uniforms exhibition, this film testified to the strong influence of female veteranistcommemorators on the interwar commemorative culture.
283
Chapter 6: Remember My Forgotten Man (and Woman):
Popular Culture, Politics, and Women’s Roles as VeteranistCommemorators in the 1920s and 1930s
On June 16, 1932, during the height of the Bonus March, President Herbert Hoover
and First Lady Lou Henry Hoover hosted their annual White House garden party for
1,000 disabled veterans. Assisted by the First Lady’s fellow WOSL members Mabel
Boardman, Lena Hitchcock, and Representative Edith Nourse Rogers, along with
numerous uniformed nurses and aids, the veterans enjoyed sandwiches and sweet
treats as the President and First Lady received them. Unlike her husband who had to
return to work, Mrs. Hoover stayed for the entire party and spoke individually to
many veterans, whom she and the President welcomed into the White House when it
started to rain, much to the veterans’ delight. Even as veterans protested on Capitol
Hill, these prominent WOSL members tried to stay above the political fray and sent a
message from the White House that they remained focused on serving veterans. 731
Other WOSL members and female veteranist-commemorators likely took to the
streets to aid the needy veterans in town for the Bonus March.
In May 1933, almost one year after this garden party, Warner Brothers released
the musical film Gold Diggers of 1933. 732 Its final song, “Remember My Forgotten
731
“1,000 Disabled Veterans at White House Garden Fete; Nurses and Ladies In Colorful Outfits,” The
Washington Post, June 16, 1932, pg. 8, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; Matthew A. Wasniewski, ed.,
“Edith Nourse Rogers,” Women in Congress, 1917-2006 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 2006); 70-75.
732
The Busby Berkeley Collection: Gold Diggers of 1933, dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 98 mins., Warner
Brothers, 1933, DVD; American Film Institute (AFI), “Gold Diggers of 1933,” AFI: Catalog of
284
Man,” created by the film’s dance director, Busby Berkeley, depicted the plight of
World War One veterans who suffered during the Great Depression. Narrated by Joan
Blondell’s prostitute character, male veterans stayed silent for most of the scene as
impoverished women advocated for help on their behalf. From the high society of the
White House to the lower-class characters depicted in this fictional Hollywood film,
during the 1930s, women across the spectrum were recognized as leading advocates
of veteranist-commemorations.
“Remember My Forgotten Man” revealed how women’s leadership of veteranistcommemorations had become rooted in the center of the American public discourse
and debate on memorialization during the 1930s, so much so that it was endorsed by
Hollywood and included in a film intended for a mass audience. Like other 1930s
films such as Heroes for Sale (1933) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932),
this scene depicted the struggles of everyday Americans and veterans. It sent a
political message that urged the nation to support destitute veterans. Unlike most of
the 1930s ‘Forgotten Man’ films, Berkeley’s finale in Gold Diggers of 1933 placed
women at the heart of veterans’ issues during the Great Depression by depicting how
veterans’ struggles affected their female relations. Berkeley portrayed women as
influential supporters of veterans who argued that the best way to commemorate the
Forgotten Man was by helping him during his time of need. Berkeley demonstrated
his agreement with women’s definition of veteranist-commemorations and repudiated
Feature Films, n.d. < http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=1&Movie=3947> (28
December 2014).
285
statuary memorials as empty and vapid projects that did little to relieve veterans’
troubles.
Despite the scene’s underlying rejection of empty commemorations, for several
reasons, its creators did not exactly replicate the agenda of female veteranistcommemorators. Rather, the scene rhetorically gestured to the very complicated and
unresolved cultural debate about commemoration that occurred in interwar American
society, even among the supporters of veteranist-commemorations. First, “Remember
My Forgotten Man” presented a message that endorsed the 1932 Bonus March,
supported the immediate payment of the Bonus, and attacked the government for how
it handled the Bonus March. On the other hand, most female veteranistcommemorators took a more politically cautious stance regarding the Bonus March.
They attempted to remain publicly neutral about this issue and instead focused their
energies on apolitical projects that supported veterans and stayed out of the Bonus
debate. Second, the scene excluded female veterans from the ranks of the Forgotten
Man and the commemorative narrative of the war, issues that female veteranistcommemorators had been battling since the Armistice. This complex scene
demonstrated the neglect of female veterans during the interwar period and the
incomplete inclusion of women into the war’s memory, even as it reflected women’s
radical re-articulation of commemorative practices.
“Remember My Forgotten Man” revealed Americans’ anger at the government
and the pervasive disillusionment about America’s participation in the Great War
during the 1930s, a time when isolationism and the peace movement increased in
286
popularity. 733 After the Great Depression shattered the economy, World War veterans
descended on the capital in 1932 during the Bonus March and demanded the
immediate payment of their wartime Bonus, an event alluded to in “Remember My
Forgotten Man.” In 1934, Congress’s Nye Committee further increased anger about
the war through its investigation of the possible economic motivations behind
American participation in the conflict.
The following discussion of Gold Diggers of 1933 highlights the relation of this
popular film to the work of female veteranist-commemorators and demonstrates how
their ideas had reached the very center of American public discourse at the beginning
of the New Deal. By reviewing the interwar political backlash against World War
One and the events of the Bonus March, an assessment can be made of the reactions
of female veteranist-commemorators to these incidents can be assessed and the
political message of support for their work that Berkeley presented in Gold Diggers
of 1933 can be contextualized. This message of support becomes especially clear after
consideration of the biographical backgrounds of the Hollywood artists who created
this film.
As women veterans, war mothers, widows, and military family members, female
veteranist-commemorators remained devoted to their mission of commemorating the
First World War through community service and veterans advocacy, even as they
reacted to the social and political upheavals of the 1920s and 1930s. Female
733
For more on the general history of the 1930s see: David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The
American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999);
Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (New York: Harper Collins
Publishers, 2007); Ware, Holding Their Own: American Women in the 1930s; and Anthony J. Badger,
The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1989).
287
veteranist-commemorators yearned for peace while they simultaneously supported
national defense and advocated for veterans, issues they saw as complimentary.
Having participated in the First World War, these women believed the best way to
commemorate its veterans was by helping those it affected and preventing future
wars. Like Berkeley, they urged the nation to “Remember My Forgotten Man”
through veteranist-commemorations rather than memorials. This scene demonstrated
that Berkeley agreed with their efforts to popularize veteranist-commemorations as an
alternative to statuary memorials. But unlike Berkeley, who omitted female veterans
from this scene, these women insisted that the Forgotten Man could also be a woman.
The Interwar Political Backlash against the First World War
The 1920s, and especially the 1930s, witnessed an increase in cynicism about the
motives of American participation in the First World War and a distaste for war in
general, especially as isolationism, the peace movement, and pacifism became more
popular and the Great Depression intensified veterans’ struggles. 734 These movements
impacted the work of female veteranist-commemorators. They also formed the
political backdrop for Berkeley’s depiction of veterans and female veteranistcommemorators in “Remember My Forgotten Man.”
The isolationist ideology of the interwar years emerged from a long tradition of
non-interventionism that dated back to the early republic. Isolationism asserted that
734
Paul A. C. Koistinen, Planning War, Pursuing Peace: The Political Economy of American Warfare,
1920-1939 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 253.
288
the U.S. should refrain from intervening in the foreign affairs of other nations. 735
Although some isolationists were also pacifists, not all isolationists embraced
pacifism, nor did all pacifists support isolationism. Some isolationists were actually
willing to go to war in extreme cases such as invasion or direct threats to the
homeland. 736
Isolationism rejected the internationalist ideology that encouraged the U.S. to take
an active role in world affairs, especially after the First World War. 737 Although
President Woodrow Wilson had initially promised to keep the U.S. out of the
European World War, in 1917 the U.S. entered the conflict and he reversed his stance
even further after the Armistice. In the immediate postwar years, Wilson’s Fourteen
Points and advocacy for the League of Nations wedded him to internationalism. 738
Wilson and internationalism suffered a major defeat to isolationism in 1919, when
Congress refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles and prevented the U.S. from joining
the League of Nations, an action that bolstered isolationism. 739
735
Rossini, “Isolationism and Internationalism in Perspective: Myths and Reality in American Foreign
Policy,” in From Theodore Roosevelt to FDR: Internationalism and Isolationism in American Foreign
Policy, Edited by Daniela Rossini, 11-23, 113; Rieselbach, The Roots of Isolationism: Congressional
Voting and Presidential Leadership in Foreign Policy, 3, 9-13. See also: Wiltz, From Isolationism to
War, 1931-1941; Jonas, Isolationism in America, 1935-1941; Powaski, Toward an Entangling
Alliance: American Isolationism, Internationalism, and Europe, 1901-1950; Benjamin D. Rhodes,
United States Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918-1941: The Golden Age of American
Diplomatic and Military Complacency (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001); and Justus D. Doenecke and
Mark A. Stoler, Debating Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Foreign Policies, 1933-1945 (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005).
736
Rhodes, 131.
737
Rossini, 16.
738
Rossini, 16-19.
739
U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, “The League of Nations, 1920,” Milestones:
1914-1920, n.d. <https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/league> (31 October 2014).
289
Cynicism about war also manifested itself in the international peace
movement, in which women played an influential, leading role. 740 The American
peace movement traced its roots to the 1820s and always involved women as key
participants alongside men. These women were often referred to as specifically being
part of the women’s peace movement. The precise beliefs of the members of the
entire peace movement varied and included pacifists, isolationists, and
internationalists. 741 Closely connected to the abolitionist movement, the suffrage
campaign, and Progressivism, the American peace movement became particularly
influential before, during, and after World War One. 742 During the interwar period,
the peace movement and pacifism in general grew in popularity because of the
widespread reaction against the war’s violence. 743
During the war, leaders such as Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt helped
form the Women’s Peace Party, which later became the U.S. section of the Women’s
International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). This group led the pacifist
740
There is a rich historiography on the women’s peace movement, see for example: Harriet Hyman
Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women’s
Rights (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1993); Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Changing
Differences: Women and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1917-1994 (New Brunswick, New
Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995); Harriet Hyman Alonso, The Women’s Peace Union and the
Outlawry of War, 1921-1942 (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997); Melinda
Plastas, A Band of Noble Women: Racial Politics in the Women’s Peace Movement (Syracuse, New
York: Syracuse University Press, 2011); Joyce Blackwell, No Peace Without Freedom: Race and the
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1975 (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern
Illinois University Press, 2004); David S. Patterson, The Search for Negotiated Peace: Women’s
Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War I (New York: Routledge, 2008). For a documentary
history of non-violence in America see: Staughton Lynd, ed., Nonviolence in America: A Documentary
History (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966).
741
Koistenen, 253; Jean Bethke Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life
(New York: Basic Books, 2002), 224.
742
For a history of the U.S. women’s peace movement during the First World War and its connections
to the Suffrage Movement, especially the U.S. section of the Women’s International League for Peace
and Freedom, see: Alonso, 56-84; Carrie A. Foster, 5-7.
743
Alonso, 85-92.
290
women who opposed the First World War. 744 Women peace activists commonly
invoked the “motherhood theme,” the idea that as mothers, women had a special
interest to pursue peace to prevent their children’s wartime deaths. 745 This
“motherhood theme” allowed women to conduct highly political work and
activism. 746
In 1924, Dorothy Detzer became the WILPF’s executive secretary, and under her
leadership and lobbying efforts, the organization gained more influence by driving
forward the ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928). 747 Detzer previously
worked at Hull House with Jane Addams. She joined the peace movement after the
death of her twin brother from a prolonged battle with the after-effects of mustard gas
poisoning and because of her experiences in 1920 as a relief worker in Europe with
the American Friends Service Committee. 748 The war profoundly affected her life,
motivating her belief in pacifism and her efforts to create policies favorable to
peace. 749 She wanted to prevent others from suffering like her brother and the people
744
Alonso, 59-83. For an in-depth history of the WILPF see: Catherine Foster, Women for All Seasons:
The Story of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Athens, Georgia: The
University of Georgia Press, 1989); Gertrude Bussey and Margaret Tims, Pioneers for Peace:
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 1915-1965 (London: WILPF British Section,
1980); Carrie A. Foster, The Women and the Warriors: The U.S. Section of the Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1946 (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1995).
For more on Jane Addams and the peace movement see: Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and
Wendy Chmielewski, eds., Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (Urbana, Illinois: University
of Illinois Press, 2009); Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life; Allen
F. Davis, American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973); Jane Addams, Emily G. Blach, and Alice Hamilton, Women at the Hague: The
International Congress of Women and Its Results (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1972); Jane
Addams, Peace and Bread in Time of War (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1972).
745
Alonso, 10-12. For more on how motherhood intersected with the peace movement and pacifism in
England see chapter 4 “Reactionary of Revolutionary?: The Maternal Pacifist” in: Sharon Ouditt,
Fighting Forces, Writing Women: Identity and Ideology in the First World War (London: Routledge,
1994), 131-168.
746
Alonso, 11.
747
Alonso, 99-100, 123-124; Jeffreys-Jones, 65-83.
748
Alonso, 88-100; Jeffreys-Jones, 66-67.
749
Jeffreys-Jones, 67-68.
291
she aided in postwar Europe. With Detzer at the helm, throughout the 1930s the
WILPF and other women’s groups encouraged peace and promoted disarmament,
ideas also supported at times by the American War Mothers (AWM) and the
Women’s Overseas Service League (WOSL). 750 But unlike these organizations of
female veteranist-commemorators, many women’s peace groups opposed the military
altogether and believed that the existence of a military led to the abuse of women and
the proliferation and acceptance of institutionalized violence. 751
As popular support for peace and neutrality expanded, so did accusations that
financial reasons motivated U.S. participation in World War One. 752 Congress
investigated these concerns from 1934 to 1936 through the Senate Special Committee
Investigating the Munitions Industry, commonly called the Nye Committee. 753
Dorothy Detzer lobbied Congress to create this committee, and with the help of
Nebraska’s Republican Senator George W. Norris, she persuaded the other
Republican Nebraska Senator, Gerald P. Nye, to establish and lead the committee. 754
The Nye Committee investigated the munitions industry, its role in the First
World War, and the possible financial motivations for U.S. participation in the war. 755
750
Alonso, 116-124.
Alonso, 9.
752
Ortiz provides a detailed history of the Bonus and Bonus March. Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March
and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal Era, 84, 117.
753
Thomas J. Gibson, “The Nye Committee and American Isolationism,” Master’s Thesis, The
Claremont Graduate School, 1958, 2-3; Koistenen, 253; Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and
American Foreign Relations (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1962), 66-76; Carroll
W. Pursell, Jr., The Military-Industrial Complex (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1972), 117128.
754
The women’s peace movement thus bore direct responsibility for the formation of the Nye
Committee. The larger peace movement and the industrial preparedness movement also influenced the
creation of the Nye Committee, although these groups sometimes conflicted because the industrial
preparedness movement was led by the American Legion and the War Department who prioritized
national security. Cole, 8-9, 67-68, Koistenen, 253-254, 279.
Koistenen, 253, 279; Cole, 8-9.
755
Koistenen, 253, 279; Cole, 8-9.
751
292
It considered the possibility of nationalizing the munitions industry and reviewed the
results of the research previously done by the 1930 War Policies Commission. 756 The
Nye Committee also examined American financial companies and the Office of the
Assistant Secretary of War’s procurement and economic mobilization planning
efforts. 757 Nye boldly indicted the U.S. Government for being involved in war
profiteering with the munitions industry. 758 The Nye Committee criticized war, and
Nye himself asserted that “there is certainty that the profits of preparation for war and
the profits of war itself constitute the most serious challenge to the peace of the
world.” 759 Although the Nye Committee failed to secure legislative action on many of
its recommendations, such as the regulation of the shipbuilding industry and
government ownership of munitions industries, it gained widespread attention and
influence and lent credibility to isolationism and the peace movement. 760
The Nye Committee led to the passage of the Neutrality Acts between 1935 and
1937. 761 With Senator Bennett Champ Clark (D-MO), Nye introduced what became
the First Neutrality Act into the Senate in 1935. 762 When FDR signed the First
Neutrality Act on August 31, 1935, he signaled that isolationists had gained enough
power to influence his foreign policy. He signed the Second and Third Neutrality
Acts in 1937 and 1939. 763 Among other things, these laws prohibited the exportation
756
Koistenen, 56, 254, Cole, 69-72.
Koistenen, 256.
758
Rhodes, 134.
759
Koistenen, 253; Nye, Nov 15, 1934, as quoted in Cole, 76.
760
Cole, 96-97.
761
Koistenen, 297-299; Powaski, 66; Rieselbach, 11-12.
762
Rhodes, 136.
763
Rhodes, 137. FDR’s foreign policy remains controversial, with his critics calling him an unskilled
statesmen and his defenders praising his overthrow of isolationists by entering World War II.
Doenecke and Stoler, 1-2; George B. Tindall, David E. Shi, Thomas Lee Pearcy, The Essential
America (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), 480-481.
757
293
of weapons and the issuing of direct and indirect loans to warring nations. They
restricted Americans from travelling on ships run by warring nations and they enabled
the President to prevent exports of nonmilitary goods to warring nations. 764 Backed
by the Neutrality Acts, isolationism and the peace movement maintained their grip on
the country until around 1939, when the outbreak of World War Two in Europe
began to decrease their popularity. 765
After the onset of the Great Depression, the disillusionment with the Great War
and America’s motivations for entering it ignited the Bonus March, one of the most
polarizing episodes of the Great Depression and a key part of the political message in
“Remember My Forgotten Man.” In the early 1920s, veterans had lobbied for
retroactive financial compensation for their wartime pay, referred to as the Bonus.
The Bonus would correct what they argued was inadequate financial compensation
compared to the salaries of workers in war-related industries on the home front. 766 As
discussed in chapters one and three, in 1924, Congress passed the Adjusted Service
Compensation Act. This legislation gave World War One veterans a bonus payment
of one dollar per day of domestic service and an additional twenty-five cents for
every day they spent overseas. 767 This Bonus would not be paid until 1945, except if
a veteran died, in which case the payment went to the veteran’s beneficiaries. 768
764
Rieselbach, 11-12; for more on the Neutrality Acts see: Powaski, 66-75.
Rieselbach, 12.
766
Ortiz, 24-25; Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic (New York:
Walker & Company, 2004), 4-5; Roger Daniels, The Bonus March: An Episode of the Great
Depression (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971); W.W. Waters (as told
to William C. White), B.E.F. The Whole Story of the Bonus Army (New York, Arno Press & The New
York Times, 1969); Donald J. Lisio, The President and Protest: Hoover, MacArthur, and the Bonus
Riot (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994); Harris Gaylord Warren, Herbert Hoover and the
Great Depression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959).
767
Dickson and Allen, 4-5; Ortiz, 9, 23-24.
768
Lisio, ix; Ortiz, 1.
765
294
After the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression heightened
veterans’ hardships, some veterans lobbied for the early payment of the Bonus, a
request opposed by President Herbert Hoover. 769 In response, thousands of veterans
and their families descended on Washington D.C. in the spring and summer of 1932
in an attempt to persuade Congress to distribute the Bonus early. 770 Dubbed the
Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF) as a reminder of their service in the American
Expeditionary Force (AEF), the veterans set up shanty towns dubbed Hoovervilles.
Some illegally squatted in condemned buildings from which they were later evicted
by the police who shot and killed two protestors. 771 After this incident, Hoover agreed
to call in federal troops under the command of Army Chief of Staff and First World
War veteran General Douglas MacArthur, who led his soldiers in an assault on the
Bonus Marchers and pushed them out of the city. 772 This episode, and Hoover’s
missteps with the Bonus March, further ruined his deteriorating reputation, villianized
him in the eyes of the public, and helped FDR win the 1932 Presidential election. 773
Even before the Bonus March, FDR presented himself as the champion of the
ordinary Americans who suffered most from the Great Depression. The Bonus March
strengthened this persona, although FDR did not support the early payment of the
Bonus and tried to keep the issue out of his campaign. 774 Nevertheless, FDR
promoted this image during the campaign, especially when he coined the term the
769
Lisio, ix.
Lisio, x; Ortiz, 2.
771
Lisio, x; Ortiz, 2.
772
Lisio x-xi, 1-4. Lisio argues that Hoover ordered the army’s operations to be limited and that he was
unfairly villianized for the assault. He asserts it was unsound rumors of a communist conspiracy and
MacArthur’s disobedience that led to the assault.
773
Ibid.
774
Shlaes, 125-137; Ortiz, 58-59. Many veterans later criticized FDR for his opposition to the Bonus
and the 1933 Economy Act which reduced veterans’ benefits, Ortiz, 64, 66.
770
295
“Forgotten Man” in a radio address on April 7, 1932. 775 In this address, known as
“The Forgotten Man Speech,” FDR referenced the First World War and called on
citizens to mobilize again as they had during the war, but this time against the Great
Depression. FDR, who served as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy during World
War One, often used such martial metaphors in his rhetoric about the Depression. 776
In this speech, he criticized Hoover for forgetting the “infantry of our economic
army” and proclaimed that:
these unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the
forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic
power for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and
not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten
man at the bottom of the economic pyramid. 777
When he utilized the phrase the “Forgotten Man,” FDR recognized the suffering of
ordinary Americans and their importance to rebuilding the economy. He
foreshadowed the collective efforts of the government and the citizens that he later
encapsulated in the New Deal. 778 The mass media and popular culture picked up on
the symbolism of the phrase and incorporated it into various cultural products,
especially films. 779 Referred to by some film scholars as the ‘Forgotten Man films,’
775
Martin Rubin describes this speech as “FDR’s most celebrated speech of the 1932 campaign” and
concludes that “the phrase forgotten man immediately seized the public imagination.” Martin Rubin,
“The Crowd, the Collective, and the Chorus: Busby Berkeley and the New Deal” in Movies and Mass
Culture, Ed. John Belton (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996): 59-92; 72;
Jeffrey Spivak, Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley (Lexington, KY: The University Press of
Kentucky, 2011), 76; Franklin D. Roosevelt, “128: Radio Address From Albany, New York: “The
Forgotten Man” Speech April 7, 1932,” The American Presidency Project, n.d.,
<http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=88408> (31 October 2014); Jonathan Kahana, “The
Forgotten Man; or, How Hollywood Invented Welfare,” Camera Obscura 62, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2006):
74-107, 81-82; Shlaes, 127-129.
776
“The Forgotten Man” Speech April 7, 1932.” For more on how FDR used the analogy of war to
promote the New Deal see: Sherry, In the Shadow of War, 15-26.
777
“The Forgotten Man” Speech April 7, 1932.”
778
Kahana, 84.
779
Kahana, 81-89; Hammond, 282-284.
296
this genre included Gold Diggers of 1933, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,
Heroes for Sale, My Man Godfrey (1936), and others. 780 In these films, the war bore
responsibility for veterans’ struggles, although the Forgotten Man was often
tangential to the main plot, as in Gold Diggers of 1933. 781 By taking the title of
“Remember My Forgotten Man” from the contemporary political language, this scene
directly connected its message to political events and reinterpreted FDR’s speech to
apply specifically to World War One veterans.
Female Veteranist-Commemorators’ Reactions to the Disillusionment of the Interwar
Era
In the midst of this atmosphere of disillusionment, depression, and veterans’ protests,
female veteranist-commemorators pursued their goals and participated in these
political debates. Although the approaches of female veteranist-commemorators often
differed, these women were connected by their devotion to supporting veterans.
Inspired by their wartime services and sacrifices, female veteranist-commemorators
emphasized how their experiences led them to detest war and support peace, although
they cannot be labeled as pacifists or as opponents of the military since their main
mission concentrated on helping and defending veterans. They opposed war because
it would harm a new generation of Americans and create another class of suffering
780
Kahana, 75-76. “Remember My Forgotten Man” and its interpretation of (poor) women as the
heroes and helpers of the Forgotten Man can be seen as the antithesis to My Man Godfrey which
portrays (wealthy) women as selfish insensitive to the plight of the Forgotten Man, so much so that
they collect them in a scavenger hunt. My Man Godfrey, dir. Gregory LaCava, 93 mins., Universal
Pictures, 1936, DVD.
781
Andrew Kelly, Cinema and the Great War (London: Routledge, 1997), 149-150; Giuliana Muscio,
Hollywood’s New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 149; Hammond, 284.
297
veterans. Rather, like the Daughters of the American Revolution did before them, the
majority of female veteranist-commemorators supported national defense and military
preparedness as a way to achieve peace. 782 The American War Mothers and the
Women’s Overseas Service League simultaneously supported some aspects of the
peace movement, even while they advocated for a strong national defense program.
They understood that advocating for peace supported veterans by preventing another
war.
As discussed in chapter three, the outspoken support of the peace movement by
the founder of the American War Mothers, Alice French, influenced the
organization’s stance on peace. In September 1920, French declared that she wanted
the AWM to play a role in the peace movement. She envisioned the AWM as “a
league of Mothers that will enforce peace” and she explained how she had “an
ambition now that this will be an international league of mothers to enforce peace.” 783
The first charter of the AWM even included in its object statement a mission that
combined their belief in peace with their support of the military. It stated that the
AWM would “keep sacred the ties that bind together the mothers who gave their own
blood and energy for their Country’s heroes and the World’s Peace.” 784 French
782
Morgan, 108-11. Morgan explains how before WWI, the DAR participated in female peace
activism along with the Women’s Peace Party and believed that military preparedness could help
efforts to achieve peace. The female veteranist-commemorators of the interwar era seem to have
followed in their footsteps and combined their beliefs in peace work and military preparedness.
However, unlike the DAR before the war, these postwar women did not focus on what Morgan calls
“men-centered nationalism” but tried to place women in the center of nationalism with more authority
and opportunities. Perhaps women’s advances during the war led them to this platform.
783
“American war mothers first executive board meeting Louisville, Kentucky September 29-30,
1920” pg. 2; no folder, unlabeled box, American War Mothers National Headquarters Collection, Gift
of Nelda P. Bleckler, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
784
“History of Indiana Chapter of American War Mothers, Scrapbook of Alice Moore French,” pg. 31,
M458, Folder 9, Box 1, pg. 31, Alice Moore French Papers, Indiana Historical Society.
298
wanted the AWM to become leaders in the international peace movement while they
commemorated veterans through relief. She hoped that the members of the AWM
would be the last generation of war mothers in a world without war. 785
As the AWM matured as an organization, they emphasized the importance of
national preparedness to the prevention of war and the effort for world peace. Mrs.
McCluer, the AWM national president from 1923 to 1927, stressed that “no group
wants peace more than our own, but we would not jeopardize the safety of our
organization…we must guard our nationalism, and the American War Mothers, who
really served and paid the price, realize what preparedness means. We stand behind
the army and navy.” 786 Like other female veteranist-commemorators, the AWM
believed that preparedness could help prevent the outbreak of war.
The Women’s Overseas Service League also expressed their opposition to war
and their desire to pursue peace and international disarmament. At their First National
Convention in 1921, the WOSL passed a resolution in favor of disarmament that they
sent to President Harding. The resolution explained that WOSL members were
motivated to support international disarmament because they had “experienced and
seen the horror, suffering and devastation caused by war,” and realized the necessity
of international disarmament to the prevention of war. 787 The WOSL professed that
they were “especially desirous of doing all in their power to repair the damage
785
See preceding, American War Mothers chapter; du Plessis, “Alice French: Indiana War Mothers,
From World War I “Kitchen Soldiers” to Postwar Immigrant Reformers;” and “Transcript of
Proceedings: Second Biennial Convention of American War Mothers, 1921,” pg. 31.
786
“Guard Nationalism, Mrs. M’Cluer Says,” The Indianapolis News, Folder 8: AWM Indiana Chapter
Scrapbook 1921-26, M458, Box: 1, Alice Moore French Papers, Indiana Historical Society.
787
“Resolution Sent to President Harding by Women’s Overseas Service League at Meeting June 24th,
1921,” Folder: First National Convention, 1921 Philadelphia; Box: Women’s Overseas Service
League: Reports, Ann. Natl. Conventions, 1921-25 (1st-5th) Box 7; National WWI Museum.
299
wrought by the Great War.” They felt that “the burden of taxation upon the people
who took part in the Great War can now be very materially lightened by international
disarmament.” 788 They resolved to ask the President “to call a Conference, as soon as
the same can be conveniently arranged, to discuss World Disarmament.” 789 The
WOSL’s wartime experiences overseas convinced them to support peace efforts.
The WOSL reiterated their support for peace advocacy throughout the 1920 and
1930s. For example, during a 1930 “Armistice Tea” given by the Toledo, Ohio unit,
the unit’s minutes noted that “Miss Charlotte Ruegger told of her war experiences in a
most interesting and impressive way. It brought back to most of us some of our own
experiences “over there,” and made us realize anew the horrors and uselessness of
war.” 790 The Toledo Unit spent the fall of 1935 writing letters to Secretary of State
Cordell Hull and each Ohio congressman. These letters urged them to prevent the
U.S. from shipping goods to countries at war and reflected the concerns of the Nye
Committee. 791 The Toledo WOSL unit believed their wartime experiences justified
their desire to promote peace and prevent war. 792
788
Ibid.
Ibid. It is likely that this was referring to the Washington Naval Conference. For more on the
Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments see: Thomas H. Buckley, The United States
and the Washington Conference, 1921-1922 (Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press,
1970).
790
“Nov. 11th 1930,” Folder: W.O.S.L. Records Minute Book, Toledo Unit c.1920-1946 84.150.2;
Box: W.O.S.L. RECORDS, Minute Books of Toledo, Ohio Unit, 2 vols. 84.150.2-.3; National WWI
Museum.
791
“Nov 11, 1935,” Folder: W.O.S.L. Records Minute Book, Toledo Unit c.1920-1946 84.150.2; Box:
W.O.S.L. RECORDS, Minute Books of Toledo, Ohio Unit, 2 vols. 84.150.2-.3; National WWI
Museum.
792
“December 9, 1935,” Folder: W.O.S.L. Records Minute Book, Toledo Unit c.1920-1946 84.150.2;
Box: W.O.S.L. RECORDS, Minute Books of Toledo, Ohio Unit, 2 vols. 84.150.2-.3; National WWI
Museum.
789
300
Even as the WOSL supported peace efforts, they also supported national
defense, which many WOSL leaders and members believed necessary to achieving
peace. Sometime between 1925 and 1927, even before the war clouds gathered over
Europe again, WOSL National President Helen Douglas, who later served as a
Democratic Congressional Representative from Georgia, wrote an article in National
Defense magazine titled “The Folly of Unpreparedness.” 793 In the article, Douglas
urged peace through national defense, explaining how the WOSL’s wartime
experiences could not “be readily cast aside.” These experiences had inspired the
WOSL to pass a 1924 resolution that supported defense, preparedness, and peace. 794
The WOSL frequently sent representatives to the Women’s Patriotic Conference on
National Defense sponsored by the American Legion Auxiliary. This recurring
national convention brought together women’s patriotic organizations that pledged
their loyalty to the U.S. and advocated for national preparedness. 795 In March 1930,
the Third Corps Area, composed of residents of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington
793
From 1945 to 1947, under her married name “Mankin, Helen Douglas served a Congressional
Representative from Georgia. Wasniewski, “Helen Douglas Mankin,” Women in Congress, 1917-2006;
244-249; Lorraine Nelson Spritzer, The Belle of Ashby Street: Helen Douglas Mankin and Georgia
Politics (Athens, Georgia: The University Press of Georgia, 1982; “Mankin, Helen Douglas,” History,
Art & Archives: United States House of Representatives, n.d.
<http://history.house.gov/People/Listing/M/MANKIN,-Helen-Douglas-%28M000097%29/> (24
January 2015).
794
“The Folly of Unpreparedness” in National Defense, pg. 5-6 in Scrapbook of Toledo Unit Kept by
Julia Norton; Box: W.O.S.L. Records, Scrapbook of Toledo Unit, kept by Julia Norton. 84.150.1,
Missouri.
795
In 1930 they sent Faustine Dennis and members of the Washington Unit to the Conference and in
1932 they sent President Shirley Farr. Carry On, Vol. XI No. 3, Aug. 1932, pg. 21, MS 32, Box 38,
The Women’s Overseas Service League Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special
Collections; “Report of National President, Women’s Overseas Service League July 1929-May 1930,”
unlabeled folder of WOSL documents, no box, WOSL Collection, National WWI Museum; John J.
Noll, “Preserve, Protect, Defend,” The American Legion Monthly, Vol. 14, No. 4 (April 1933), 2627,42-42; Hill, 33-338.
301
D.C., and Virginia, proposed a resolution later adopted at the 1930 WOSL National
Convention. 796 It stated that:
believing that the principles, ideals and institutions of our government
as provided for by the Constitution of the United States must be
maintained, and further deeply desiring peace, we hereby declare, that
while subscribing to the principle of world arbitration we also firmly
believe that in order to maintain peace the citizens of this country must
support an adequate National defense, as provided for and outlined by
the National Defense Act… 797
The WOSL saw peace activism as compatible with their support for veterans. They
believed that national defense prevented war. These beliefs distanced them from
pacifists. Their peace platform contrasted with the mainstream peace movement and
its leaders. They especially differed from Dorothy Detzer who denounced U.S.
preparations for World War Two even after Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and
also campaigned against the Lend-Lease Act. 798
Despite these differences from the peace movement, the WOSL interacted
with the movement and its leaders, even if they were not part of the mainstream peace
movement themselves. 799 On October 16, 1928, the Toledo Unit “agreed that the
entire Unit should attend the lecture by Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago, to
be given on Armistice Sunday afternoon at Trinity Church on the subject of
“International Peace,” the lecture being sponsored by the Committee on the Cause
796
Carry On, Vol. IX, Aug. 1930, No. 3, pg. 40, Folder: 1930, Box: 1922-1932; Carry On, Vol. V, No.
4, Nov 1926, inside cover, Carry On Periodical Collection, Gift of Carolyn Habgood, Women’s
Memorial Foundation Collection.
797
“Report, Vice-President, Third Corps Area,” unlabeled folder of WOSL documents, no box, WOSL
Collection, National WWI Museum.
798
Jeffreys-Jones, 82-83.
799
Alonso, The Women’s Peace Union and the Outlawry of War, 1921-1942, 167.
302
and Cure of War.” 800 They made this decision on the same day they decided to
condense literature on the proposed National Defense Act to send to every patriotic
organization in the city asking for support. 801 This WOSL unit supported national
defense and peace efforts even as they interacted with Jane Addams, who despised
military patriotism and argued that national defense led to militarism. 802
As the 1932 Bonus March captured the nation’s attention, female veteranistcommemorators would have been well aware of its powerful symbolic message. As
discussed in chapter one, the WOSL subtly addressed the Bonus March during their
July 1932 National Convention, but like their close partners the American Legion, it
seems that the WOSL and the AWM attempted to remain publicly neutral about the
events in the capital. 803 To avoid becoming embroiled in the political turmoil
surrounding the Bonus March, these groups focused on their commemorative service
work that immediately aided veterans.
While the Bonus March predominantly brought the plight of male war veterans to
national attention, the needs of the numerous women who served overseas were less
well-known by the general public because their status placed many of them outside
the purview of government assistance. Even though they were omitted from the lyrics
of “Remember My Forgotten Man” and from the scene’s depiction of struggling
800
“October 16,1928,” Folder: W.O.S.L. Records Minute Book, Toledo Unit c.1920-1946 84.150.2;
Box: W.O.S.L. RECORDS, Minute Books of Toledo, Ohio Unit, 2 vols. 84.150.2-.3, WOSL
Collection, National WWI Museum.
801
Ibid. First passed in 1920, the National Defense Act of 1920 reorganized the Army after the lessons
learned in WWI and helped to strengthen the National Guard. It is not clear if this unit’s work was in
support of this iteration of the act or another later version that may or may not have passed. Koistinen,
5-7.
802
Elshtain, 219.
803
Carry On Vol. XI, No. 3, Aug 1932, pg. 26, MS 32, Box 38, The Women’s Overseas Service
League Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.
303
veterans, many of the women who served and sacrificed during World War One can
be considered Forgotten Women. These women believed themselves to be veterans of
the war like the members of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, even if the government
did not officially recognize them as such. The women who championed veteranistcommemorations continuously advocated for the rights of these women.
The government did officially recognize a small group of women as veterans, a
designation that made them eligible for the Bonus. This group included only the
women who had served as Army or Navy nurses or as enlisted members of the Navy
or Marine Corps. 804 The government’s narrow definition of “veteran” excluded
countless women who deployed overseas in a variety of capacities. Today, many of
these women would be labeled as working for non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) doing charitable work or as contractors who directly supported the military,
such as the ‘Hello Girls’ who served with U.S. Army Signal Corps. 805 Regardless of
their formal status and the arguments about what the government owed them, many
women had real needs after the war, and women’s veteranist-commemoration
organizations aided them.
The members of the American Legion’s Yeoman (F) Post 50, a Philadelphia post
composed entirely of former members of the Navy Yeoman (F), realized the
importance of their inclusion in the Bonus. In 1924, they helped other women who
were eligible for the Bonus fill out their applications. At their monthly Executive
804
For more on women’s veteran benefits and lack thereof see: Susan Zeiger, 167-174 and Ebbert and
Hall, The First, the Few the Forgotten: Navy and Marine Corps Women in World War I, 97-110.
805
The Hello Girls’ did not receive veterans’ benefits until 1979 after a long struggle to press their
case. Rebecca Robbins, Raines, Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army
Signal Corps (Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, 1999), 170, 204.
304
Committee meeting on June 30, 1924, “application blanks for Bonus were distributed
and finger prints were applied to blanks, and help in filling them out was given at this
time. Many ex-service women appeared and were ably assisted by members of the
committee for this purpose.” 806 Post 50 commemorated their fellow female veterans’
service by helping them obtain their government benefits. They understood that many
women needed assistance because women were not obvious candidates for the Bonus
like men.
The WOSL advocated for officially designated female veterans as well as
those women who were denied that status, whether or not they were WOSL members.
Through their service and advocacy work, they publicized the history of women’s
roles in the war. They constantly reminded the public that many women received no
government benefits for their service and were excluded from the Bonus. 807 The
Pittsburgh WOSL unit reported in February 1937 that when they sent their annual
appeal for funds to their local friends and supporters, “since the needs of many
service men had been cared for through the bonus, part of the appeal was made on
behalf of disabled service-women.” 808 They gave the following explanation in their
appeal:
Contrary to the general belief, Red Cross nurses, welfare workers,
members of the Signal Corps and others did not receive a bonus,
neither are they eligible for help of any kind from the government or
the organizations with which they served. Many of these women are
now alone in the world and are in need of physical care for which they
806
“June 30th, 1924,” in “History of Post 50 American Legion 1919-1951, Collection #1216, Gift of
Rita McDonald, Women’s Memorial Foundation Collection.
807
Zeiger, 167-172.
808
Carry On, Vol. XVI, No. 1, February 1937, pg. 28-29, Folder: 1937, unlabeled box, Carry On
305
cannot pay. Your contribution, however small, will help to alleviate a
real need. 809
The Pittsburgh unit received a generous response and ample donations. This enabled
them to help former overseas women who lacked official veteran status, were
excluded from the Bonus, and often relied on their former colleagues for support.
Many of these women were truly Forgotten Women, perhaps even more overlooked
than the Forgotten Men. Female veteranist-commemorators came to their aid while
they worked for world peace. Although Hollywood endorsed these women’s
argument in favor of veteranist-commemorations in Gold Diggers of 1933, their
efforts to publicize the plight of forgotten female veterans achieved less success, as
demonstrated by the omission of female veterans from “Remember My Forgotten
Man.”
Gold Diggers of 1933: A Popular Culture Anthem for Veteranist-Commemorations
Like other 1930s Hollywood films, Gold Diggers of 1933 communicated powerful
political and social messages to audiences. 810 The film’s finale, “Remember My
Forgotten Man,” symbolically depicted many women’s belief in veteranistcommemorations, their hopes for peace, and their dedication to helping America’s
Forgotten Men. It endorsed American women’s leadership of veteranistcommemorations through its female narrator and female chorus who commemorated
male veterans by advocating on their behalf. The choice to portray such strong female
809
Ibid.
For more on how Hollywood filmmakers of the 1930s used their films to send political messages
see: Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics on the Age of the New Deal; May, The Big
Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way; Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Social
History of American Movies; Bergman, We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films.
810
306
characters demonstrated female veteranist-commemorators’ powerful impact on the
interwar commemorative culture and debate. Although these women’s argument for
veteranist-commemorations reached Hollywood, their efforts to include women
veterans in the ranks of the Forgotten Man failed to resonate in Hollywood, since
Berkeley did not portray women veterans alongside male veterans.
Produced by Warner Brothers, Gold Diggers of 1933 derived its plot from the
popular 1919 play The Gold Diggers, upon which that studio had already based two
films. 811 Mervyn LeRoy directed this 1933 musical version from the screenplay
written by James Seymour, David Boehm, and Ben Markson. Busby Berkeley served
as the dance director in charge of the musical numbers written by the songwriting
team of Al Dubin and Harry Warren. 812 Part of the popular genre of ‘backstage’
musicals that focused on a play’s production, the film followed a group of chorus
girls struggling to find work during the Depression. Polly Parker’s (Ruby Keeler)
love interest, the secretly wealthy Brad Roberts (Dick Powell), offers to front the
money for a new show that depicts the challenges of the Depression and will put the
girls to work again. Hijinks and romance ensue as the chorus girls teach Brad’s
relatives a lesson about misjudging them as gold diggers. Although the film focused
on this comedic plot, references to the Depression were interspersed throughout, most
notably in the opening number “We’re in the Money” and the finale. 813
811
These were a 1923 silent version and a 1929 sound version. Arthur Hove, ed., “Introduction: In
Search of Happiness,” in Gold Diggers of 1933 (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 1980); 9-11.
812
Hove, 12-14, 18-22, 45.
813
For example “We’re In the Money” represents Depression-era daydreams of wealth in the form of a
musical number interrupted during rehearsals because the show is being shut down for lack of money,
which Ginger Rogers’ character Fay explains as being the result of “the Depression, dearie.” The
Busby Berkeley Collection: Gold Diggers of 1933.
307
The finale, “Remember My Forgotten Man,” formed part of the film’s ‘show
within a show’ and occurred after the resolution of the film’s main plot. Joan Blondell
played a prostitute who narrated the scene and led a female chorus in an emotional
musical lament about the plight of destitute World War One veterans. In the first part
of the scene, she was joined by African-American singer Etta Moten who sang the
chorus and symbolically included African-Americans among the Forgotten Man,
although Berkeley visually segregated her from the white actors. The middle of the
scene flashed back to the battlefields of World War One and showed the
transformation of a line of American Doughboys from green recruits to combat-weary
veterans. This line of Doughboys transitioned into a bread line of the same men
during the Great Depression. The song ended with an elaborate tableau of marching
Doughboys, veterans, and women who all pled for veterans and their families to be
remembered and aided during the Great Depression (figure 6.1).
308
Figure 6.1: The ending vignette of the “Remember My Forgotten Man” number. Used
with permission from the core collection, production files of the Margaret Herrick
Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The rich and detailed symbolism in “Remember My Forgotten Man” warrants
a close and comprehensive analysis of the scene. Berkeley used each shot to portray
the desperate situation of America’s forgotten veterans. He created a complex, multilayered musical number that visualized some of the tenets of veteranistcommemorations. As James Gilbert reminds us, images are a “crucial ingredient in
memory” and historians need to take heed of their analytical power. 814 Keeping this
in mind, “Excursus A” contains an in-depth, shot-by-shot analysis of “Remember My
814
James Gilbert, Whose Fair? Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 102-105.
309
Forgotten Man.” This excursus guides the reader through the entire scene and
provides the context that clarifies this chapter’s analysis of the skit.
Much has been written by scholars about Gold Diggers of 1933 and
“Remember My Forgotten Man.” 815 Attention has focused most on the
cinematography, the creation of Berkeley’s geometric “Berkeleyesque”
choreography, the meaning of his visual largess in the context of the collectivism of
the Depression and 1930s politics, and the male gaze, gender roles, and sexuality.
Viewed through the lens of veteranist-commemorations, this much-studied scene can
take on yet another dimension. The way that Joan Blondell’s character comforts,
advocates for, and commemorates the Forgotten Man can be understood as a
cinematic depiction of women’s leadership of veteranist-commemorations. The scene
represented on screen this practical form of commemoration advocated by women. In
815
Sources that discuss Gold Diggers of 1933, “Remember My Forgotten Man,” and how Berkeley’s
chorus numbers represent the collectivism of the New Deal and Great Depression include but are not
limited to: Arthur Hove, ed., “Introduction: In Search of Happiness,” in Gold Diggers of 1933; Thomas
Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1988); Kelly, Cinema and the Great War; Richard Barrios, A Song in the Dark: The Birth of
the Musical Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Barry Keith Grant, The Hollywood Film
Musical (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); Mick LaSalle, Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood
and the Birth of the Modern Man (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002); “Michael E. Birdwell,
“”After They’ve Seen Paree”: The AEF in Film and Music,” in Unknown Soldiers: The American
Expeditionary Forces in Memory and Remembrance, Ed. Mark A. Snell (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State
University Press, 2008); 238-263; 252; Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the
Great Depression, xx, 233-236; Bruce Babington and Peter William Evans, Blue Skies and Silver
Linings: Aspects of the Hollywood Musical (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1985), 4849; Rubin, “The Crowd, the Collective, and the Chorus: Busby Berkeley and the New Deal;” Martin
Rubin, Showstoppers: Busby Berkeley and the Tradition of Spectacle (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1993); Allen L. Woll, The Hollywood Musical Goes to War (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1983);
Martin Rubin, “1933: Movies and the New Deal in Entertainment,” in America Cinema of the 1930s:
Themes and Variations Ed. Ina Rae Hark (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007); 92116; Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor, eds., Hollywood’s World War I: Motion Picture Images
(Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997).
310
many ways, Blondell’s character stood in for Gold Star wives, mothers, women
veterans, and other female veteranist-commemorators. 816
The scene’s political message has been central to many scholarly analyses.
The scene directly referenced the Bonus March and alluded to the disillusionment
with the Great War in the 1930s. 817 Scholars consider the number to be “an earnest
call to action,” “a social document,” and a “propaganda piece.” 818 One scholar even
called it “a choreographic version” of the popular musical anthem of the Great
Depression, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime.” 819 With the election of FDR, still
fresh at the time of the film’s release on May 27, 1933, some academics have
contended that the inclusion of “Remember My Forgotten Man” constituted a risky
choice since not all Americans supported FDR. 820 Although Gold Diggers of 1933
was written during the 1932 presidential campaign before the implementation of the
New Deal, because the film opened in New York and Los Angeles during the week
816
Women were often seen as central to fighting the Great Depression. Eleanor Roosevelt even
published It’s Up to the Women in 1933 to demonstrate women’s importance to helping the nation
through this crisis. Ware, Holding their Own: American Women in the 1930s, 1.
817
For more on how Gold Diggers of 1933 depicted the Bonus March and the film’s political message,
see: Richard Barrios, Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 24, 182 (footnote 8); Barrios, A Song in the Dark, 376; LaSalle, 190; Rubin, 72-74; and
Grant, 62. For more on how FDR used the analogy of war to promote the New Deal see: Sherry, 15-26.
Rubin argues that the number’s “directness is a consequence of its political commitment” and that
“Remember My Forgotten Man” is one of Hollywood’s most hard-hitting political statements of the
1930s—much more so than the treatment of similar material in Warner Bros.’s Heroes for Sale (also
1933).” Rubin, 74.
818
Barrios, Dangerous Rhythm, 24. Grant, 56-57. Grant explains that “the film depicts not just the
union of the three couples in love but also “the larger union of the nation itself during the economic
crisis of the Depression. This pattern informs many of the Warner Bros’ musicals of the period,
including Gold Diggers of 1933” (56-57). Tony Thomas and Jim Terry explain that the finale is “a
trenchant social comment, making a plea for the unemployed servicemen who had been hit hard by the
Depression” and was most likely well received by veteran’s organizations such as the American
Legion.” Tony Thomas and Jim Terry with Busby Berkeley, The Busby Berkeley Book (New York:
New York Graphic Society, Inc., 1973), 61. Arthur Hove, disagrees and interprets the lyrics as
ambiguous and understands the number as a whole to be incongruous, arguing that the film is about
romance and not social justice or the Depression. My analysis rejects his argument. Hove, 25-31.
819
Dickstein, 235.
820
LaSalle, 191; American Film Institute (AFI), “Gold Diggers of 1933.”
311
that Congress passed the National Recovery Act (NRA), one scholar asserted that the
film, “a big box-office hit, itself became an example of stimulating the economy—the
perfect instantiation of Warner Bros’ promotional angle when it was released: “A
New Deal for Entertainment.”” 821 Because 1930s Hollywood filmmakers frequently
put political and social messages into popular films intended for mass audiences and
often considered romance films and musicals legitimate mediums for these messages,
the political implications of Gold Diggers of 1933 must be taken seriously. 822
Scholars have also focused on the gendered aspects of the scene’s social
message. They have noted that this skit is as much about women as it is about men. 823
One scholar commented how the scene showed that if the government found “it
distasteful to come to the aid of able-bodied men, helping them might be a good idea,
if only to prevent the blossom of American womanhood from having to peddle itself
on the street.” 824 By abandoning the Forgotten Man, the government also abandoned
women and forced them into prostitution. Helping these women might seem more
appealing to the government than helping their destitute men, for these women, like
their husbands, sons, and brothers, also sacrificed for the war effort and could be
considered victims of the war. 825
Much of the film has been read as an equation between economics and sex.
One scholar explained that:
821
Grant, 56-57; Spivak, 72.
Giovacchini, 1-9. My analysis of “Remember My Forgotten Man” follows Giovacchini’s call for
scholars to analyze the political intentions of Hollywood filmmakers and study their work to better
understand the social, political, and cultural climate of the 1930s. Like other 1930s Hollywood films,
Gold Diggers of 1933 wove contemporary political and social commentary throughout the story,
balancing moments of escapist entertainment with somber political messages.
823
La Salle, 191.
824
LaSalle, 191.
825
Ibid.
822
312
For working men in the Depression, the loss of their jobs or the
decrease in their earning power represents a form of impotence. What
Blondell and the other women in the number are saying is: because my
man can’t get a job, he has lost his virility-he can’t love me the way he
used to do. 826
The men’s upright stances during the war represented their virility while their
slumped posture as they left the battlefield symbolized castration. 827 As for Blondell’s
streetwalker character:
it is the woman who dominates the song, supplies its voice, stands on
the highest steps, lights the cigarette, and subdues the club-wielding
cop…the women in “Remember My Forgotten Man” regard their
fallen men with nothing but sympathy and concern, on an equal
footing…they view their relationship not as dependent but
interdependent. 828
This assessment of the scene’s female characters as strong, vocal leaders lends
credence to the interpretation that these characters could also represent female
veteranist-commemorators. Scholars have overlooked the fact that women veterans
could be included among the Forgotten Men. Even though most of the song and
Berkeley’s staging of it excluded explicit images of or references to women veterans,
Dubin’s vague lyrics did leave a little room for interpretation by the audience. A
member of the WOSL, the AWM, or a Gold Star mother or widow who watched this
film could have conceived of herself as among the forgotten Americans it depicted,
especially since women narrated the scene. Blondell’s character could even be
considered a Gold Star widow who lost her husband through destitution during the
Depression rather than on the battlefield. Like other female veteranist-
826
Rubin, “The Crowd, the Collective, and the Chorus: Busby Berkeley and the New Deal,” 73.
Rubin, “The Crowd, the Collective, and the Chorus: Busby Berkeley and the New Deal,” 73.
828
Rubin, Showstoppers, 105; Grant, 67-69; Rubin, “The Crowd, the Collective, and the Chorus:
Busby Berkeley and the New Deal”, 77.
827
313
commemorators, perhaps she now led efforts to honor his memory by helping
veterans. Or perhaps her character served somehow during the war so that she could
be a considered a veteran and a Forgotten Man herself.
The timely political and social message of “Remember My Forgotten Man”
makes sense given the political leanings of Warner Brothers, the studio that produced
it. Film historians consider Warner Brothers to have been one of the most socially and
politically conscious studios in the 1930s. Warner Brothers often took risks and
produced films with controversial subjects. 829 Jack Warner leaned Democratic and
openly supported FDR, and later, the New Deal. The studio even sent a contingent of
their stars, including Gold Diggers of 1933’s Joan Blondell, to FDR’s 1933
inauguration. 830
Initially, “Remember My Forgotten Man” was meant to appear somewhere in
the middle of the film. 831 The scene became the finale because Jack Warner and his
colleagues realized the number’s emotional power and the force with which it would
829
Kelly, 96; Dickstein, xv, 233-236, 313-314; Cass Warner Sperling and Cork Millner, with Jack
Warner, Jr., Hollywood Be Thy Name: The Warner Brothers Story (Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing,
1994); Babington and Evans, 46-49; Schatz, The Genius of the System; Bergman, We’re in the Money:
Depression America and Its Films; Although most scholars agree that Warner Brothers was
sympathetic to FDR, Nick Roddick argues that the appraisal of Warner Bros as being the most
supportive of FDR “is based on a fairly small proportion of the company’s overall output… Warners
may have made more such films than other studios, but the Depression is, for example, an important
element” in other films from different studios. Nick Roddick, A New Deal in Entertainment: Warner
Brothers in the 1930s (London: Garden House Press, 1983), 249-251.
830
Matthew Kennedy, Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of
Mississippi, 2007), 54. Warner Brothers showcased their support for the New Deal most clearly in
Footlight Parade, the next in their sequence of backstage musicals that featured dance direction by
Berkeley. Released in October 1933, the dancers in the “Shanghai Lil’ create an image of FDR’s face
from flags filmed from overhead; these flags then become the National Recovery Administration
(NRA) eagle. The Busby Berkeley Collection: Footlight Parade, dir. Lloyd Bacon, 104 mins. Warner
Brothers, 1933; Rubin, “The Crowd, the Collective, and the Chorus: Busby Berkeley and the New
Deal,” 76-77; Dickstein, 240; Barrios, A Song in the Dark, 377-379; Bergman, 64-65; American Film
Institute, “Footlight Parade,” AFI Catalog of Feature Films, n.d.,
<http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=3881> (21 November 2014);
Sklar, 243; Kennedy, 54.
831
Kelly, 153; Barrios, A Song in the Dark, 377.
314
close the film. 832 In doing so, like Heroes for Sale and other Forgotten Man films, the
political statement in Gold Diggers of 1933’s finale left the audience to contemplate
its message as they returned to the realities of the Depression. 833 Using this scene as
the finale, combined with the opening number “We’re In the Money,” bookended the
film between two songs that commented on the political and social struggles of the
Great Depression and used women as the central narrators and heroes of these
musical political agitation pieces. The film began and ended with women in the
spotlight and momentarily shifted the focus of World War One films from men to
women, even though it omitted female veterans.
The film’s combination of political commentary, innovative musical numbers,
and comedy helped it receive mostly laudatory reviews. The New York Times praised
the film as “good entertainment.” It earned almost a million dollars more than the
earlier 42nd Street, making Gold Diggers the second highest grossing picture of
832
Barrios, A Song in the Dark, 377. Barrios found this information from Variety, May 30, 1933;
Grant, 64.
833
Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Volume 3: Heroes for Sale, dir. William A. Wellman, 71 minutes,
Warner Brothers, 1933, DVD.
315
1933. 834 The Washington Post reported how after breaking attendance records, the
film’s run repeatedly got extended at Washington D.C. theatres. 835
Many reviews noted the finale’s political implications but focused more on
assessing the film’s lighthearted moments and did not deeply probe the finale’s
meaning or begin a debate about its message. One review in The New York Times
merely described this skit as “particularly cleverly presented, with striking costumes
and impressive staging. The “Forgotten Man” is the World War Veteran.” 836 Another
review in The New York Times called the scene “a dirge-like composition…which is
concerned with the veterans of the A.E.F.” 837 The Washington Post described the
scene as simply “a finale of overwhelming pageantry” and “tremendously
dramatic.” 838 Variety analyzed the finale the most deeply. It praised the “rousing, rahrah finish which, while Cohansque, is timely and patriotic. It’s a plea for the army of
the unemployed titled “Remember My Forgotten Man.” A bing-bang build-up that’ll
834
“Those Forty-Niners of Broadway,” The New York Times (New York, NY), June 18, 1933, X3. For
more on the film’s mostly laudatory reviews see: Grant, 56; Barrios, A Song in the Dark, 377;
Bergman, 63-64; Kelly, 154: Variety 13 June 1933; “Warren William, Aline MacMahon and Guy
Kibee in a Musical Conception of “The Gold Diggers,”” The New York Times (New York, NY), June
8, 1933, 22; “Gold Diggers of 1933,” The Washington Post (Washington D.C.), June 17, 1933, 4;
“Gold Diggers of 1933,” The Washington Post (Washington D.C.), June 24, 1933, 4, ProQuest
Historical Newspapers. Leslie Halliwell, contends that “Remember My Forgotten Man,” when
“divorced from its arresting subject it isn’t a very good number at all, despite the insistent throb of its
music, and one might think it could have been justified only if collecting boxes had been promptly
passed around the theatre in aid of veterans’ relief. Needless to say that never happened: all the profits
from the picture went straight into Jack L. Warner’s bank account.” Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell’s
Harvest: A Further Choice of Entertainment Movies From the Golden Age (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1986), 68.
835
“Warner Musical Is Continued Another Seven Days at Met,” The Washington Post (Washington
D.C.), June 25, 1933, 22; “That Musical Hit, Like Brook, Seems to Run On and On,” The Washington
Post (Washington D.C.), July 2, 1933, S4, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
836
“Warren William, Aline MacMahon and Guy Kibee in a Musical Conception of “The Gold
Diggers,”” The New York Times (New York, NY), June 8, 1933, 22.
837
“Those Forty-Niners of Broadway,” The New York Times (New York, NY), June 18, 1933, X3.
838
“Gold Diggers of 1933,” The Washington Post (Washington D.C.), June 17, 1933, 4.
316
have the American Legion proclaiming paens of endorsement for the flicker.” 839
Although the finale’s plea to support the Forgotten Man came across to reviewers, at
least in the press it did not seem to elicit much public debate. This indicates that the
reviewers may have agreed with the scene’s message or did not view it as
controversial enough to warrant a deep analysis. Such a reception suggests that the
ideals of veteranist-commemorations had truly entered the center of public discourse
and reached journalists, audiences, and the teams of Hollywood filmmakers who
shaped popular cinema.
These Hollywood teams were especially important because the filmmaking
process in the 1930s constituted a collective enterprise in which all parties involved
with a film influenced decisions. This included the director and the performers,
especially actresses. 840 During the Pre-Code era of Gold Diggers of 1933’s
production, actresses wielded particular power in Hollywood. 841 As the biggest stars
and revenue makers, leading ladies such as Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Joan
Crawford, Mae West, Katherine Hepburn, and Joan Blondell, among others,
dominated Hollywood through their sexual appeal and spirited portrayal of women’s
issues and stories. 842
839
Review by Variety 6/12/33 as quoted in Pike and Martin, 170. Thus far, I have not yet found any
reactions to this film in the American Legion’s magazine around the time of its release.
840
LaSalle, Complicated Women, 2.
841
LaSalle, Complicated Women, 1-3. The Pre-code era usually refers to films made between March
1930 when the Production code censoring films was adopted, and 1934 when it finally began to be
enforced. Mark A. Vieira, Sin In Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.,
1999), 6-8, 17-18. See also: Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection
in American Cinema, 1930-1934 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
842
LaSalle, Complicated Women, 4-9, 77, 118-119, 164. For more on women in film in the 1930s see:
Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960 (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1993).
317
An influential and prolific actress in the early 1930s, Joan Blondell may have
had enough clout to influence Berkeley’s direction of “Remember My Forgotten
Man” and ensure that her prostitute character held the moral high ground to safeguard
her from criticism for playing a streetwalker. 843 It is possible that Blondell likely
agreed with Berkeley’s interpretation of the song as an anthem of veteranistcommemorations. Blondell later supported the troops during World War Two. As part
of the Hollywood Victory Committee, she performed for servicemen just like her
parents did during World War One. 844 She might even have collaborated with
Berkeley on her portrayal of the streetwalker as a moral advocate for veterans,
although Blondell’s biographer speculated that she was modest about her role in the
scene’s political message. Later in life, Blondell admitted in an interview that she did
not remember much about the scene, mostly because of her personal troubles at the
time. 845
Joan Blondell’s portrayal of a streetwalker in this scene is highly significant in
the context of Pre-Code Hollywood’s infatuation with prostitutes. 846 Screen
prostitutes abounded before the enforcement of the Code, and were often used to send
sympathetic messages and demonstrate that morality and chastity were not always
identical. This was true in Gold Diggers of 1933, in which the prostitute acted as the
843
LaSalle, Complicated Women, 135. For more on Joan Blondell see: Kennedy, Joan Blondell: A Life
Between Takes; Joan Blondell, Center Door Fancy (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972). Although it is
a novel, Center Door Fancy seems to be loosely based on Blondell’s own life.
844
Sheilah Graham, “Joan Blondell, a GOOD MOTHER, Is Welcomed Home From War Work,” The
Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia), May 30, 1943, pg. 5D.
845
Kennedy, Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes, 56-57.
846
LaSalle, Complicated Women, 87-96. For more on fallen women and prostitutes in 1930s film see:
Lea Jacobs, The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942 (Madison,
Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).
318
scene’s heroine and moral compass. 847 As the voice of reason, Blondell’s prostitute
inverted social norms in a Brechtian manner. She demonstrated the government’s
immoral treatment of veterans and strengthened the scene’s anti-war, pro-peace
message, one not so dissimilar to that in Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her
Children. 848
Etta Moten, Blondell’s African-American counterpart in the finale, may also
have influenced the political and racial messages in the scene. A renowned performer
adored by black and white audiences, Moten publicly advocated for civil rights
throughout her life and openly discussed racial issues. She sang at an anti-lynching
event in 1935, and in her later years she lectured about African American and African
heritage. 849 Civil rights supporter Eleanor Roosevelt even invited her to sing
“Remember My Forgotten Man” at FDR’s birthday party in 1934. This event made
Moten the first African-American woman to sing at the White House and proved the
centrality of this song to American public discourse in the early 1930s. 850 In 1934,
847
LaSalle, Complicated Women, 91-94
“Mother Courage and Her Children” was staged in New York in 1935. Giovacchini, 25-26. For
more on Bertholt Brecht see: Glynn Wickham, A History of the Theatre (New York: Phaidon Press,
1992), 232-233; James K. Lyon, Bertholt Brecht in America (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1980); W. B. Worthen, The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama (Boston, Massachusetts:
Thomson Wadsworth, 2004); 709-737.
849
“Etta Moten, Four Other Women To Get B'nai B'rith Achievement Award,” The Chicago Defender,
21 Nov 1959, pg. 15, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “South Hath Charm For Miss Etta Moten:
Conditions Different Than What She Expected To Find,” New Journal and Guide, 14 Nov 1936, pg.
15, ProQuest Historical Newspapers; “Etta Moten Is Well Received In Knoxville: No Discrimination
In Use Of Hall Shown,” The Chicago Defender, 25 Mar 1939, pg. 14, ProQuest Historical
Newspapers; Ruthe Winegarten, ed., Black Texas Women: A Sourcebook (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1996), 114-115; “Church Activities of Interest in the City,” The New York Times, 5 Jan 1935,
pg. 18, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
850
Traci Parker, “Guide to the Etta Moten Barnett Papers, University of Chicago,”
<http://mts.lib.uchicago.edu/collections/findingaids/index.php?eadid=MTS.barnett> (21 November
2014); “Kansas City Girl Guest Singer at White House, Plaindealer, 9 Feb 1934, pg. 6, ProQuest
America’s Historical Newspapers, African-American Newspapers; “RKO Officials Say Etta Moten is
Credit, Plaindealer, 23 Feb 1934, pg. 6, ProQuest America’s Historical Newspapers, AfricanAmerican Newspapers.
848
319
soon after this performance, Moten married the founder of the Associated Negro
Press. In 1946, she declared that Hollywood should make African-American artists
“part of the great American scene.” 851 A newspaper interview with Moten even stated
that she had “engineered” herself into her part in Gold Diggers of 1933. 852 Aware of
the symbolic power of her brief role, perhaps she collaborated with Berkeley to
visually include African-Americans in the scene’s message to demonstrate that they
too were Forgotten Men and Forgotten Women who struggled during the Depression.
Like Blondell and Moten, the biographies of the Warner Brothers production
team that created the film provide more evidence of its political implications, even
though neither Mervyn LeRoy nor Busby Berkeley, seems to have publicly discussed
the film’s political meaning in much depth. 853 Director Mervyn LeRoy is famous for
creating films with a mass appeal and escapist fare but he is also remembered for his
liberal films that promoted social and political messages. 854 He directed another
Forgotten Man film, 1932’s I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang that told the story of
851
Parker; Billy Rowe, "It's Up to the Actors to Change Hollywood," The Pittsburgh Courier 15 Jun
1946, pg. 23, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
852
Fay Jackson, “Kansas City Girl Starred in 1933 Gold Diggers,” Plaindealer, 7 Jul 1933, pg. 5,
ProQuest America’s Historical Newspapers, African-American Newspapers
853
For example, in his autobiography, LeRoy says little of substance about “Gold Diggers of 1933”
and only mentions it in connection with his onetime girlfriend Ginger Rogers and the lavish nature of
the film’s production values. Mervyn LeRoy, Mervyn LeRoy: Take One (New York: Hawthorn Books,
Inc. 1974), 119. In an interview discussing his films, Berkeley stated that “We were content to write
original stories with original musical scores, and embellish them with unusually daring and spectacular
musical numbers—and the audiences loved them. It took their minds off the troubles and worries of
the day;” from: Bob Pike and Dave Martin, The Genius of Busby Berkeley (Reseda, CA: Creative Film
Society, 1973), 15. For more on Busby Berkeley see: Spivak, Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby
Berkeley; Bob Pike and Dave Martin, The Genius of Busby Berkeley (Resesda, California: CFS Books,
1973); Thomas and Terry.
854
William R. Meyer, Warner Brothers Directors: The Hard-Boiled, the Comic, and the Weepers
(New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House Publishers, 1978), 223, 229-231; Peter Roffman and
Beverly Simpson, “LeRoy, Mervyn,” in The Political Companion to American Film, Edited by Gary
Crowdus (Lakeview Press, 1994), 249; LeRoy, Mervyn LeRoy: Take One; George Stevens, Jr., Ed.,
Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006); Thomas Schatz, 140-148; Bergman, 92-96, 120-121; and
Babington and Evans, 47-49.
320
a World War One veteran who hoped for a better future upon his return home, but
was mistakenly jailed for a crime he did not commit. 855 The film sent a stinging
indictment of the justice system and chain gangs. LeRoy’s later film, They Won’t
Forget (1937), probed the historical memory of the Civil War in the 1930s south and
criticized southerner’s prejudices against northerners and African-Americans. This
film also portrayed the justice system and lawyers as corrupt. It highlighted LeRoy’s
pattern of directing films with critical social and political messages. 856
One of the screenwriters for Gold Diggers of 1933, David Boehm, wrote a
play titled It Happened to Adam that premiered in London in 1934. Reviewers
criticized the play for being crude and vulgar. 857 Boehm defended his script as merely
portraying the realities of sex through comedy. 858 This incident reveals that perhaps
Boehm held radical or unconventional views for his time and expressed them in his
work, as may have been the case in Gold Diggers of 1933.
The film’s songwriters, Harry Warren and Al Dubin, both served in the
military during World War One; Warren in the navy and Dubin in the army. 859
Similar to Berkeley, Warren led musical and dramatic entertainment for sailors
stationed at Long Island, while Dubin served with the entertainment unit of the 77th
855
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 92 mins., Warner Brothers, 1932, DVD.
They Won’t Forget, dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 95 mins., Warner Brothers, 1937, DVD.
857
“Boehm Play Assailed,” The New York Times (New York, NY), Nov. 10, 1934, 18.
858
David Boehm, “Note From Mr. Boehm,” The New York Times (New York, NY), Nov. 25, 1934,
X3.
859
Robert Gottleib and Robert Kimball, eds., Reading Lyrics (New York: Random House, Inc., 2000),
128; On Broadway Songbook: 15 Broadway Favorites (Alfred Music Publishing, 2007), 46; David
Ewen, Great Men of American Popular Song (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970), 314320; Mark Robinson, The World of Musicals: An Encyclopedia of Stage, Screen, and Song, Vol. 1
(Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2014),198-199; Songwriters Hall of Fame, “Al Dubin,” Songwriters
Hall of Fame Virtual Museum, n.d. < http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/exhibits/C68> (21
November 2014).
856
321
Division in France. 860 Before the war, Dubin contributed lyrics to the 1916 proneutrality song “The Hero of the European War” which lauded President Wilson for
keeping the U.S. out of war. He also collaborated on patriotic songs such as “Your
Country Needs You Now” (1917). His lyrics embraced contemporary political
opinions. 861 Warren and Dubin are best remembered today for writing the songs
included in the 1980 Broadway version of 42nd Street, loosely based on the original
42nd Street (1933) film, the predecessor of Gold Diggers of 1933. This Broadway
production included some songs from Gold Diggers of 1933 and their other films, but
“Remember My Forgotten Man” was omitted. 862 Like other modern Broadway
musicals that evoke the nostalgia of interwar musical theatre, most of 42nd Street’s
songs were removed from their original context in the films they were written for.
This deprived them of the political power they initially yielded and obscured the
memory of Warren and Dubin’s politically powerful movie music. 863
860
Ewen, 315-317.
Al Dubin, Rennie Cormack, and George B. McConnell, “Your Country Needs You Now,” The
Library of Congress, 1917 < http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200200609/> (21
November 2014); Al Dubin, George B. McConnell, and Jos. A. Burke, “The Hero of the European
War,” The Library of Congress, 1916 <http://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.100004413/> (21 November
2014).
862
Together, Warren and Dubin wrote numerous songs that have become part of the Great American
Songbook, many of which were written specially for the Berkeley dance musicals of the 1930s.
William Zinsser, Easy To Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs (Jaffrey, New
Hampshire: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., 2000), 137-143. The Broadway League, “42nd Street,”
Internet Broadway Database n.d. <http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3963> (21 November
2014); The Broadway League “42nd Street,” Internet Broadway Database n.d.
<http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=12864> (21 November 2014). 42nd Street was revived on
Broadway in 2001.
863
Other Broadway shows that combine popular music of the 1920s-1940s into a new plot include
Crazy for You and Nice Work if You Can Get It. The Broadway League, “Nice Work If You Can Get
It,” Internet Broadway Database, n.d <http://www.ibdb.com/show.php?id=491373> (21 November
2014); The Broadway League, “Crazy for You,” n.d. <http://www.ibdb.com/show.php?id=2807> (21
November 2014).
861
322
Most importantly, Busby Berkeley, who directed and choreographed
“Remember My Forgotten Man,” was also a World War One veteran and admitted his
personal connection to the scene’s message during a 1963 interview. When asked
why the scene was used as a “downbeat finale” for the film, Berkeley explained that
“it was a spectacle type of number and a good one to use in those dark days of the
depression, when many people had forgotten the guys who had gone to war for our
country. I am a great sentimentalist at heart, so I thought it good to use.” 864 This
demonstrates that Berkeley directed the number to send the audience and the
government a message that the World War veterans were being treated poorly and
deserved assistance. Perhaps he did not elaborate on his connection to the Army or
his support of veterans because of the anti-military climate of the Vietnam era at the
time of the interview.
Berkeley’s pro-veteran political message in “Remember My Forgotten Man”
makes sense given his pattern of infusing political and moral commentary into his
films. Although Berkeley is popularly remembered for his lavish and often vapid
musical numbers filled with scantily-clad chorus girls, his larger body of cinematic
work tells another story. As a director and choreographer, Berkeley often used his
films to make politically radical messages, especially in his non-musicals. In 1939 he
directed They Made Me a Criminal (1939), a film that presented the police as inept,
the law as irrational, and lawyers as corrupt. It showed how the police could make a
wrong judgment and implied that it is sometimes better to be a good person than to
864
Quoted in Pike and Martin, 68.
323
obey the law. 865 She Had to Say Yes (1933), which he co-directed with George Amy
and was released in July 1933, not long after Gold Diggers of 1933, included a
scathing indictment of American businesses and their immoral male leaders. 866 It
depicted a company that used its female employees to entice potential customers and
improve revenue during the economic downturn. Blatantly sexual, it included three
instances of unwanted sexual advances that could be perceived as attempted rapes. It
openly criticized the loss of morality in the quest for money. Although Berkeley was
not an outspoken member of the radical, leftist popular front active in the 1930s, his
films indicate that he was influenced by the movement. 867 Like the artists of the
popular front, his films portrayed the labor of performers, used mass culture to depict
ordinary working-class Americans, sent messages about morality, and criticized the
corruption of the government. 868 Read against Berkeley’s other films, it can be
inferred that Berkeley directed “Remember My Forgotten Man” to make a political
statement that boldly criticized the U.S. justice system’s treatment of veterans.
Berkeley’s own status as a veteran and his military experiences had a
profound effect on his life, especially his success as a choreographer and director. In
his youth, he attended the Mohegan Lake Military Academy. He enlisted in the Army
just one day before the U.S. entered the First World War and requested officer’s
training and a position in the artillery to get overseas quickly. 869 In France, Berkeley
865
They Made Me A Criminal, dir. Busby Berkeley, 92 mins, Warner Brothers, 1939, DVD; Spivak,
159-163.
866
American Film Institute, “She Had to Say Yes,” AFI: Catalog of Feature Films, n.d
<http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=5805> (29 December 2014);
Spivak, 82
867
Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Verso, 1998), xv-xvii.
868
Ibid.
869
Spivak, 19.
324
trained under French officers on the 75mm and 15mm howitzers and received his
commission as a second Lieutenant in the 312th Field Artillery of the 79th Division.
He conducted parade drills with American soldiers and developed widely admired
trick drills and innovative routines that involved thousands of men marching in
complicated patterns. Eager to get to the front lines, Berkeley requested training as an
aerial observer, but the war ended before he got into combat. These experiences are
reflected in his choreographic style and his aerial shots; they are understood to be the
origins of his famous “Berkeleyesque” style. 870 He stayed in Europe on occupation
duty and helped develop entertainment for American troops as the Assistant
Entertainment Officer in Coblenz, Germany for the U.S. 3rd Army of Occupation.
Berkeley gathered soldiers who were performers in civilian life and directed and
sometimes performed in touring shows for the troops until he secured passage home
as a ship’s entertainment officer. Back in New York, he entered the theatre as a
performer and then as a dance director, building off of his wartime entertainment
work. 871
Berkeley’s experiences in the First World War are extremely significant for
his direction of “Remember My Forgotten Man.” As a veteran of the war, Berkeley
could identify with the struggles of other World War One veterans, even if he did not
share their plight. He might have been somewhat patriotic based on his decision to
volunteer for the Army before the U.S. officially entered the war, and because of his
attempts to gain a combat position. This patriotism came across in many of his films,
870
871
Schatz, 150; Spivak, 18-26.
Thomas and Terry, 18-20; Pike and Martin, 132-133; and Spivak, 13-27.
325
such as Babes in Arms (1939) with its finale titled “God’s Country,” and Strike Up
the Band (1940), which ended with an image of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland
raising an American flag. Both scenes probably aimed to increase American
patriotism as World War Two broke out in Europe. 872 In Footlight Parade (1933),
released in October 1933 just after Gold Diggers of 1933, the sailors and chorus girls
in the finale, “Shanghai Lil,” created an image of the U.S. flag and FDR’s face from
banners filmed from overhead. They then formed the shape of the NRA eagle from
which the sailors fired shots to defeat the Great Depression. This vignette formed an
obvious message of support for FDR’s New Deal and an attempt to revise patriotism
in American audiences. 873 The inscription on Berkeley’s headstone in the Desert
Memorial Park cemetery in Cathedral City, California omits any reference to his
successful film career and only states: “Busby Berkeley: 2d Lt U.S. Army World War
I” (figure 6.2). 874 Berkeley seems to have been proud of his wartime experiences
which might have made him sympathize with the Forgotten Man and the Bonus
March.
872
The Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland Collection: Babes in Arms, dir. Busby Berkeley, 120 mins.,
MGM, 1939; The Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland Collection: Strike Up the Band, dir. Busby
Berkeley, 120 mins., MGM, 1940, DVD.
873
The Busby Berkeley Collection: Footlight Parade, dir. Lloyd Bacon, 104 mins. Warner Brothers,
1933
874
Find a Grave, “Busby Berkeley,” Find a Grave, 1 Jan. 2001 <http://www.findagrave.com/cgibin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=1326&PIpi=76765> (31 October 2014); Palm Springs Cemetery District,
“About Us: History,” Palm Springs Cemetery District, n.d. <http://www.pscemetery.com/> (31
October 2014).
326
Figure 6.2: Busby Berkeley’s grave at the Desert Memorial Park Cemetery, Cathedral
City, CA. Photography by Arthur Koykka from: <http://www.findagrave.com/cgibin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=1326>
The First World War appeared in many of Berkeley’s films in various forms;
these films demonstrated his fascination with his experiences ‘over there.’ His later
film, For Me and My Gal (1942), told the story of a vaudeville couple during World
War One, played by Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. 875 It touched on the tragedies of
the war, the cowardice of draft-dodging, and the real meaning of heroism.
Significantly, Garland’s character shamed Kelly’s character when he tried to dodge
the draft, and she went to war first as a uniformed YMCA entertainer in France.
Although the cut of Garland’s uniform skirt resembled the contemporary World War
Two WAAC uniform more than the YMCA uniforms used in World War One—
possibly to highlight women’s contributions to the current war—Berkeley presented
women as active uniformed participants in World War One, even though he omitted
them from the veterans portrayed in “Remember My Forgotten Man.” As shown in
875
For Me and My Gal, dir. Busby Berkeley, 104 mins., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1932, DVD.
327
chapter five, during World War Two, the memory of women’s World War One
service was re-appropriated to support the current war effort. Nonetheless, through
this film Berkeley still reminded audiences of the sacrifices of the First World War
and women’s roles supporting veterans upon their return home.
In Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936), Berkeley’s dance direction of Warren and
Dubin’s musical number “All’s Fair in Love and War” brought World War One to
life through his choreography. 876 Berkeley directed the scene to present an anti-war
message that parodied warfare through comedy and romance. Chorus girls dressed in
Doughboy helmets waved white flags of peace and danced in martial marching
formations as they feminized war through a mock battle. As the lyrics proclaimed that
“love is just like war,” Berkeley’s choreography told viewers to make love and not
war. An entrenched group of chorus girls dressed as Doughboys stationed next to “no
man’s land” flirted with male soldiers next to “no woman’s land” and waged a battle
across the trenches with perfume gas attacks. The mock battle ended when the
trenches moved together and the men and women kissed. By poking fun at his
distinctive choreographic style, Berkeley portrayed war as ridiculous as his own
dance numbers. He appropriated the visual tropes of the First World War to show the
futility and senselessness of war and to send the audience a politically radical antiwar message that supported the recent Neutrality Acts.
“Remember My Forgotten Man,” and many of Berkeley’s other film projects,
constitute living memorials to World War One. 877 As a cinematic living memorial,
876
Gold Diggers of 1937 on The Busby Berkeley Collection: Volume 2, dir. Lloyd Bacon, 101 mins.,
Warner Brothers Pictures, 1936, DVD.
877
In analyzing the Forgotten Man films of the 1930s, Michael Hammond places them in the context
of the contentious commemorative culture at the time. He explains that the 1930s “laid the foundations
328
this scene in particular represented a trenchant rejection of empty monumentalist
rhetoric. Berkeley’s theatrical career was launched because of his wartime service and
his distinctive choreographic style originated in World War One. Berkeley owed his
success to his experiences in France and his choreography was the direct result of his
aerial training and the parade drills he developed for the AEF. 878 The many military
marches featured in his films, his overhead shots that used his aerial observation
skills, and his formations of chorus girls in intricate patterns were all products of
World War One and were linked to its memory. Berkeley often referenced the war,
either symbolically through his militaristic choreography or through the subject
matter of his movies. The performers in his films can even be understood as
embodying the memory of the war in their performances. Berkeley used the bodies of
his performers to create images that emerged from the war and represented its
memory onscreen. Much like the Colonial Dames uniforms exhibit where the human
form retained by the uniforms operated as a memorial rooted in the corporeality of
women veterans, Berkeley used his performers’ bodies to construct a cinematic living
memorial.
for the cultural commemoration of the returning veteran in the United States. Tensions between
modern and traditional efforts to imagine the veterans’ experience during and after the war generally
played out across art and literature and were often divided along the lines of elite and popular forms.
The returning veteran was an embodiment of those competing discourses, each seeing to make sense of
the war. At times of commemoration the veteran was a ‘relic’ of the past to be honored and feted but
during periods of social unrest the veteran became an unwelcome reminder of the war’s cost and a
threat to the social order, a forgotten man.” Michael Hammond, “War Relic and Forgotten Man:
Richard Barthelmess as Celluloid Veteran in Hollywood 1922-1933,” Journal of War & Cultural
Studies, Vol. 6, No. 4 (November 2013): 282-301, 283.
878
Dickstein also notes that Berkeley’s choreography was likely also inspired by the stylized
expressionist films of the 1920s and that he learned from the work of the same German expressionist
filmmakers as Leni Riefenstahl. Dickstein, 82-83, 234-235.
329
As a living memorial to World War One, “Remember My Forgotten Man”
iconized and celebrated the path-breaking role of the women who rejected older and
more rhetorical forms of commemoration. It memorialized the Forgotten Man by
compelling citizens and the government to support veterans through relief. The scene
implicitly scorned statuary memorials and asserted that they were not helpful without
projects that aided veterans. Nonetheless, the scene’s omission of women veterans
among the ranks of the Forgotten Man demonstrated that during the 1930s, women
were rarely included in the public discourse about veteran politics, and would not be
better included until World War Two.
Conclusion
“Remember My Forgotten Man” reflected the powerful impact that female
veteranist-commemorators had made on American commemorative culture by 1933.
It portrayed onscreen what women were doing in real life: honoring veterans through
advocacy and aid while working towards a more peaceful future. The scene endorsed
the efforts of female veteranist-commemorators as a positive alternative to the
construction of statuary memorials, even though it took a more politically divisive
stance in support of the Bonus March than these women. The scene’s exclusion of
female veterans from the ranks of the Forgotten Man indicated the pervasiveness of
women’s continued marginalization from the category of veterans in interwar
330
America, and the weakening of the collective memory of women’s wartime
service. 879
“Remember My Forgotten Man” contextualized female veteranistcommemorators within the social and political disillusionment of the 1930s. As the
women and veterans in the scene begged for help, they displayed the anger at the
government manifested most dramatically in the 1932 Bonus March. The scene’s
jarring images of the First World War and the nation’s treatment of veterans depicted
the distaste for war and internationalism stimulated by isolationism and the peace
movement throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and put into action by the Nye
Committee and the Neutrality Acts.
African-American singer Etta Moten’s cameo in the scene alluded to and
encapsulated the challenges faced by African-American women as they attempted to
participate in veteranist-commemorations. These African-American women made
race impossible to ignore. By representing the plight of an African-American woman
at all, Berkeley reminded viewers that African-Americans also served in the war and
that these veterans and their families now suffered just like white Americans.
Berkeley’s inclusion of Moten and his subtle suggestion that her character
collaborated with Blondell’s character allowed African-American women more
agency than they were actually given by most female veteranist-commemorators. But
by featuring Moten after Blondell, and by showing Moten alone in each shot,
Berkeley still marginalized and segregated Moten in some of the same ways that
white female veteranist-commemorators segregated their organizations and
879
Roddick, 11-12; Kahana, “The Forgotten Man; or, How Hollywood Invented Welfare,” 94-95.
331
memorialization projects. 880 Moten’s vignette demonstrated how despite the
segregation of the interwar commemorative culture, differing opinions among
veteranist-commemorators about race and African-American women’s own attempts
to join their ranks made it increasingly difficult to fully exclude African-American
women. 881
This film captured the complex ways that interwar female veteranistcommemorators looked beyond memorials and monuments to remember America’s
Forgotten Men and Forgotten Women from the Great War. It portrayed the anger that
some Americans like Berkeley and many female veteranist-commemorators felt about
the uselessness of the numerous statuary memorials erected to memorialize this
conflict. After experiencing the effects of war and facing the challenges of the Great
Depression, these women focused their commemorative efforts on promoting peace
and helping veterans. Although the permanent physical evidence of their
commemorative efforts may be scarce today, their impact on interwar America cannot
be underestimated, for out of the ashes of battle they helped veterans and worked for
collective peace. As the U.S. entered another world war in 1941, the experiences of
female veteranist-commemorators during the First World War and their involvement
with postwar commemorations continued to inspire them. WOSL member
880
The segregation of these organizations is in line with the practices of other women’s organization in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such as the Women’s Relief Corps, the YWCA, and
the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The American Legion also segregated its chapters.
Francesca Morgan, Woman and Patriotism in Jim Crow America, 12, 118; Christopher Courtney
Nehls, “A Grand and Glorious Feeling:” The American Legion and American Nationalism between the
World Wars,” PhD. Dissertation, University of Virginia, 2007, 8-9.
881
Whalan asserts that after the war some African-American women even tried to carve out their own
niche in the New Negro “manhood movement,” suggesting African-American women’s increasing
refusal to be subordinated by either race or gender. Whalan, 147-164. For more on how AfricanAmericans approached the racist interwar commemorative culture see: Whalan, 191-240. For more on
how African-American supported the war effort see Morgan, 117-125.
332
Representative Edith Nourse Rogers spearheaded the GI Bill to ensure that veterans
would be honored through substantive aid. Rogers also created the Women’s Army
Corps so that women would have expanded opportunities to serve in the military and
would be discharged as officially recognized veterans.
333
Conclusion: The Nationalization of VeteranistCommemorations
When the United States went to went to war with Europe in 1941, female veteranistcommemorators once again dedicated themselves to supporting the war effort. During
the intervening years of peace, they never ceased the service they began for their
country during the First World War. They continued their mission of veteranistcommemorations during the Second World War by shifting their focus to the new war
effort, even while they remained committed to memorializing the First World War
and helping its veterans and their families.
Throughout the country, many of the women who served and sacrificed in the
First World War re-mobilized to support the war effort in any way they could.
Service work in support of the war filled the halls of American Red Cross’ Memorial
Building to the Women of the World War. The women’s uniforms in the Colonial
Dames uniforms collection briefly left the Smithsonian’s storage areas to help The
Saturday Evening Post connect the uniformed women from the First World War to
those in the Second World War. Films like For Me and My Gal reminded Americans
of women’s past support of the military and inspired them to take up the torch of
service again. A cartoon drawn by George Price that the WOSL collected comically
sums up the commitment of the World War One women to supporting the new war
effort (figure 7.1). It shows an old woman, presumably a former Salvation Army
‘Donut Dolly,’ in a battered uniform coat who is serving donuts to a group of eager
334
young service men as two bewildered young servicewomen looked on. The caption
read: “a short refresher course and she was ready for action again.” 882
Figure 7.1: George Price’s cartoon that depicted a WWI “Donut Dolly” going back to
work during WWII. Women’s Overseas Service League Collection, National WWI
Perhaps the most significant legacy of the female veteranist-commemorators
of the First World War, and their biggest impact on World War Two veterans, came
in the form of the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the
G.I. Bill. As the Ranking Minority Member of the House of Representatives’ World
War Veterans Legislation Committee, WOSL member Representative Edith Nourse
Rogers (R-MA) played a key role in sponsoring the G.I. Bill. Male World War One
882
Folder: WOSL History Project, Box: WOSL-National History Projects, Service Projects, Rosters, 2,
Missouri.; Glenn Collins, “George Price 93, Cartoonist of Oddities, Dies, The New York Times, Jan.
14, 1995 < http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/14/obituaries/george-price-93-cartoonist-of-odditiesdies.html> (31 December 2014). This cartoon most likely appeared in The New Yorker, where most of
Price’s cartoons were published.
335
veterans joined her, including Representative John Rankin (D-MS), the chairman of
the World War Veterans Legislation Committee, and Senator J. Bennett “Champ”
Clark (D-MO), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on World
War Veterans Legislation, and a founder of the American Legion. 883 Although
Nourse’ role in creating the G.I. Bill and her First World War Service are sometimes
overlooked or underemphasized, Rogers’ biographical details and her status as a
nationally prominent female veteranist-commemorator are highly significant. 884 After
her World War One service in France and England with the YMCA and the Red
Cross as a nurse, Rogers worked at Walter Reed army hospital with the Red Cross for
several years. In 1922, President Harding appointed her as his personal representative
to supervise the care given to disabled veterans, a position that Presidents Coolidge
and Hoover later reappointed her to, even after her election to the House of
Representatives in 1925. 885
As a female veteranist-commemorator, Rogers’ leadership in the development
of the G.I. Bill indicated that perhaps this legislation constituted a form of
memorialization in line with the veteranist-commemorations pioneered during the
883
Wasniewski, 73-74; Glenn C. Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin, The G.I. Bill: A New Deal for
Veterans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 62-63; Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came
True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America (Washington: Brassey’s, 1996), 29, 91, 115-117.
884
Altschuler and Blumin as well as Bennett include Rogers in their history of the G. I. Bill’s creation
but many other studies do not include her, or overlook her and her WWI service, even though she is
seen in the famous photos of FDR signing the bill. Such studies include: Keene, Doughboys, the Great
War, and the Remaking of America and Ortiz, Beyond the Bonus March and G.I. Bill: How Veteran
Politics Shaped the New Deal Era, Edward Humes, Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the
American Dream (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Inc., 2006); Milton Greenberg, The GI Bill: The Law That
Changed America (New York: Lickle Publishing, Inc., 1997); Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens:
The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005);
Kathleen J. Frydl, The G.I. Bill (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
885
Katherine Gray Kraft, “Rogers, Edith Nourse, 1881-1960. Papers, 1854-1961: A Finding Aid,”
Harvard University Library, 1974 < http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00294> (8 Feb
2015).
336
interwar era by Rogers and her associates. The G.I. Bill provided unprecedented
benefits to male and female veterans of the Second World War, although in practice it
did not always apply equally to women, African-Americans, and other minorities. 886
Among other things, the bill provided veterans with hospitalization and rehabilitation
benefits; educational benefits; loans to purchase homes, farms, and businesses; job
counseling and help finding employment; and readjustment allowances for
unemployed veterans. 887 Signed into law by FDR on June 22, 1944 as Representative
Rogers looked on, the G.I. Bill aimed to create an effective and fair system to assist
returning veterans as they reintegrated into American society (figure 7.2). Conceived
of by World War One veterans, this legislation tried to prevent a repeat of the
government’s often disastrous interactions with World War One veterans during the
interwar years. As historian Jennifer Keene argued, the G.I. Bill can be considered
“the final legacy of World War I to the nation” 888 Having learned from their own
experiences, the men and women of the World War One generation chose to
memorialize the new generation of veterans through legislation that required the
government to take responsibility for the welfare of veterans.
886
For an analysis of race and gender discrimination in relation to the G.I. Bill, see: Altschuler and
Blumin, 118-147, Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in
Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003); Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An
Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-century America (New York: Norton, 2005).
887
58 Stat. 284 1940-1945, Hein Online;
888
Keene, 205
337
Figure 7.2: FDR signs the G.I. Bill in the Oval Office with (l to r) Bennett “Champ”
Clark, J. Hardin Peterson, John Ranking, Paul Cunningham, Edith N. Rogers, J.M.
Sullivan, Walter George, Robert Wagner, (unknown), and Alben Barkley. Note that
Rogers, leaning down towards FDR with great interest, is the only women in this June
22, 1944 image. FDR Library Photo Collection, NPx 64-269.
The passage of this bill suggests that female veteranist-commemorators and their
allies had fueled the anger at the uselessness of statuary memorials that had increased
during and after the Second World War, as more Americans turned away from
traditional monuments and towards living memorials in the wake of the Holocaust,
the atomic bomb, and new urban development. 889 Perhaps the G.I. Bill served as the
U.S.’s first national memorial to the Second World War and can help explain why it
took until 2004 to erect the National World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. In
fact, when asked if they had followed the process of this memorial’s creation, and if
they thought it should have been erected earlier, many Word War Two veterans who
visited this memorial during a 2013 Honor Flight trip responded that immediately
889
Shanken, “Planning Memory: Living Memorials in the United States during World War II,” 144145.
338
after the war they were so focused on rebuilding their lives using the benefits from
the G.I. Bill, that they did not pay attention to the lack of a memorial in their honor
until their later years. 890
The G.I. Bill publicly sanctioned female veteranist-commemorators’ belief that
veterans who return from war need and deserve certain types of assistance. It asserted
that supporting veterans constitutes a form of commemoration that should take
precedence over the creation of statuary memorials. The bill provided veterans with
some of the services that female veteranist-commemorators had deemed essential to
their welfare during the interwar period, such as hospitalization and rehabilitation
benefits, and unemployment aid. When the government failed to provide these
benefits to veterans in the past, especially to women veterans, female veteranistcommemorators took it upon themselves to deliver these services. It is no coincidence
that a well-known WOSL member like Edith Nourse Rogers spearheaded the G.I.
Bill, as the legislation adhered to the WOSL’s beliefs and legitimized the activities
they had pursued since their inception. Influenced by her participation in the WOSL,
through the G.I. Bill, Rogers achieved the nationalization of the veteranistcommemoration movement spearheaded by the WOSL and other female veteranistcommemorators who served in World War One.
By passing the G.I. Bill, Congress and President Roosevelt demonstrated that they
had heeded Busby Berkeley’s call to “Remember My Forgotten Man” and they
publicly declared that the government would try to prevent the creation of another
890
During Honor Flight San Diego’s trip to Washington D.C. on October 19, 2013, with my
supervision, Elliot Fitall, a student in my History 208 class, interviewed fourteen of the World War II
veterans on the trip. His analysis of these interviews came from his final paper. Elliot Fitall, “The
World War II Memorial,” History 208 Final Paper, The University of Maryland, College Park, 2013.
339
generation of Forgotten Men. Although female veteranist-commemorators did not
achieve a clear victory over statuary memorials amidst the complicated interwar
commemorative culture, the 1944 passage of the G.I. Bill, with a WOSL member at
the helm, demonstrated that they exerted a strong influence on American society,
politics, and culture. The influence of these female veteranist-commemorators
continues to resonate today through later iterations of the G.I. Bill that have helped
subsequent generations of American veterans. These bills have legally identified
veterans as a special class of citizens who have earned specific rights and benefits
because of their military service. 891
During World War Two, the female veteranist-commemorators of World War
One also reached out to the next generation of women in the armed forces. They
viewed these women as following in their footsteps and continuing their legacy. Their
own wartime experiences and postwar struggles provided them with insights about
how to improve women’s relationship with the armed forces. They tried to create
conditions and policies for women during the Second World War that gave them the
benefits denied to many women of their own generation.
Representative Edith Nourse Rogers made the plight of service women in the
Second World War her other personal mission. She originally introduced the
Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps Act in Congress on May 28, 1941, before the U.S.
entered World War Two, citing her own service in World War One, and the service of
other women like her, as the inspiration for the bill. Rogers justified the creation of
891
For more on the impact of later versions of the G.I. Bill on subsequent generations of veterans, see:
Mark Boulton, Failing Our Veterans: The G.I. Bill and the Vietnam Generation (New York: New
York University Press, 2014).
340
the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) by explaining how many women
wanted to serve their country but could not do so without compensation. She
specifically noted the struggles many World War One women had faced without
official military rank or veteran status. She hoped to rectify these problems with her
bill. 892 Echoing the work of the WOSL, who she noted, endorsed her bill, Rogers
even told the Senate Committee on Military Affairs how “I have seen women who
have been overseas, who have been injured over there, and they are not allowed even
hospitalization by the Government. It is very tragic.” 893 WOSL member Helen
Douglas Mankin, then a member of the Georgia Legislature, testified to the House
Committee on Military Affairs and presented a fiery defense of the Act. She
explained why she, Rogers, and the WOSL hoped that women would be granted full
and equal military status. 894
When the WAAC Act finally became law on May 14, 1942, it created the
WAAC as the only women’s organization, besides the Army Nurse Corps, authorized
to serve with the Army, but it did not make the WAAC part of the actual army,
despite the efforts of Rogers and the WOSL. The Act did not grant women in the
WAAC military status on an equal basis to men, or provide them with veteran status.
Although Rogers had wanted it to grant veteran status to women, she encountered
resistance from some male members of Congress. 895 Following the passage of the
892
“Hearings Before the Committee on Military Affairs, House of Representative, Seventy-Seventh
Congress, 2nd Session, on H.R. 6293,” Jan. 21-22, 1942, pg. 6, ProQuest Legislative Insight.
893
“Hearing Before the Committee on Military Affairs, United States Senate, Seventy-Seventh
Congress, Second Session, on S.R. 2240,” Feb. 6, 1942, Pg. 10, “ProQuest Legislative Insight.
894
“Hearings Before the Committee on Military Affairs, House of Representative, Seventy-Seventh
Congress, 2nd Session, on H.R. 6293,”pg. 40-46.
895
Bettie J. Morden, The Women’s Army Corps, 1945-1978 (Washington D.C.: The Center of Military
History, 1990), 3-5; Matthew A. Wasniewski, ed., “Edith Nourse Rogers,” Women in Congress, 19172006 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006),72-74; Evelyn M. Monahan and
341
WAAC Act, on July 21, 1942, Public Law 689 created the Women’s Naval Reserve,
known as the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) and
also allowed women to join the Marine Corps Reserve and the Coast Guard
Reserve. 896
Unyielding in her efforts, Rogers continued to argue that women should hold
official army rank and receive veterans’ benefits. In 1943, she introduced the
Women’s Army Corps (WAC) Act into Congress to create the Women’s Army Corps
as part of the regular army instead of as an auxiliary like the WAAC. 897 The passage
of the WAC Act finally granted women military rank and veteran status. Directly
inspired by her own service in the Great War and the community of women veterans
she belonged to, Nourse created the opportunities for women’s military service and
veterans’ benefits that female veteranist-commemorators had been fighting to obtain
since World War One. It was not until Nourse’s success with the establishment of the
WAC during World War Two that American women were considered official
veterans by the government and gained all the benefits that entailed. Rogers and her
compatriots from World War One opened the door for American women to officially
serve in the armed forces.
Even after Edith Nourse Rogers secured these victories for World War Two
servicewomen, women who served during the First World War still fought for the
Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee, A Few Good Women: America’s Military Women From World War I to
the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 16-19; 56 Stat. 283, ProQuest
Legislative Insight; “Congressional Record, House, March 17, 1942: Women’s Army Auxiliary
Corps,” pg. 2580-2608, ProQuest Legislative Insight; Mattie E. Treadwell, United State Army in World
War II, Special Studies: The Women’s Army Corps (Washington D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military
History, Department of the Army, 1954), 24-28.
896
Monahan and Neidel-Greenlee, 40-44.
897
Morden 12; Wasniewski, 74; 57 Stat. 371, Hein Online.
342
recognition and benefits they believed they deserved. Most famously, the ‘Hello
Girls,’ who served as telephone operators with the Army’s Signal Corps in France,
pursued a prolonged battle to obtain veterans’ benefits. 898 They finally achieved
official army status from Congress and the Department of Defense in 1979. By that
time, the ‘Hello Girls’ were in their eighties or nineties; many had passed away and
did not live to see their work officially recognized as military service.
After World War Two, the women who served and sacrificed in the First
World War continued to try to insert their contributions into the historical and
commemorative narrative of the war. They achieved two notable victories, one in
Kansas City, Missouri, and the other at Arlington National Cemetery. During the
1956 WOSL National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, the Liberty Memorial
dedicated a new three-part mural by artist Daniel MacMorris. The mural decorated
the south wall of Memory Hall, a structure at the memorial intended to be used as a
meeting room for patriotic organizations. It also contains memorial plaques that honor
the men and women from Kansas City who died in World War One. 899
Entitled “Women in War,” this mural depicted the diverse ways that American
women supported the First World War. Although it focused on the First World War,
MacMorris intended it to be universal in its depictions of women’s war work, and he
wanted it to be applicable to women’s World War Two service. The largest section of
the mural hangs in the center and includes the caption: “Steadfast beside us women of
898
Raines, Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, 170, 204;
Zeiger, 172-173.
899
“Elements of the Liberty Memorial,” National WWI Museum, n.d. <
https://theworldwar.org/explore/museum-and-memorial/elements-liberty-memorial > (6 Feb 2015);
“Private Events,” National WWI Museum, n.d <https://theworldwar.org/visit/meetings-and-eventrentals/private-events> (6 Feb 2015); Donovan, 108-109.
343
World War I, God’s gentle angels who bound our wounds and healed our troubled
spirits.” 900 In the center of this painting, MacMorris depicted the “Angel of Mercy,” a
veiled woman with massive golden wings who holds a lit torch in one hand and the
Caduceus, the symbol of medicine in the other. She stands in a prominent place near
the top of the painting in a pose reminiscent of the Madonna della Pietà. She looks
down on a group composed mostly of female nurses and other women volunteers,
many in veils, who nurse injured soldiers (figure 7.3). The right portion of the mural
honored Blue Star Women, women whose children served in the war and survived. It
is captioned: “hope like a Blue Star kept mother’s faith alive,” and depicts the
patriotic return of several service members to their mothers and families, as an angel
watches from above (figure 7.4). The left portion of the mural honored Gold Star
mothers. Captioned: “blood and mother’s tears given for a star of gold,” it shows a
grieving Gold Star mother being comforted by a priest as an angels hovers in the
background above a large headstone and the figure of death. Although Gold Star
widows are not mentioned in the caption, the painting includes a younger woman
with her two children who may represent Gold Star widows (figure 7.5).
900
Ron Grandon, “Mural To Be Dedicated Honors Service Women,” The Kansas City Times, Jul. 9,
1956, pg. 1F, 3F; “Their Service is Cited,” possibly from The Kansas City Times, both found in
unlabeled binders of Liberty Memorial Association News clippings, National WWI Museum Archive,
Kansas City, Missouri.
James J. Heiman, Voices in Bronze and Stone: Kansas City’s World War I Monuments and Memorials
(Kansas City, MO: Kansas City Star Books, 2013), 9; Donovan, 102-108.
344
Figure 7.3: “Women in War” mural, center section, by Daniel MacMorris inside
Memory Hall at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial. August
2012. Photograph courtesy of the National WWI Museum.
Figure 7.4: “Blue Star Mothers,” the right part of the “Women in War” mural by
345
Figure 7.5: “Gold Star Mothers,” the left section of the “Women in War” mural by
During the dedication ceremony, WOSL women marched in their wartime
uniforms. They were accompanied by female veterans of World War Two, a fulldress Honor Guard from the Marine Corps Reserve, and First World War Medal of
Honor recipients John Barkley and M. Waldo Hatler. In his speech at the ceremony,
Kansas City Mayor William E. Kemp professed that “the hall would not be
complete…without something to call to mind through the years to come the part that
women played in the great wars to preserve freedom in the world.” 901 Thirty-eight
years after the Armistice, women had finally gained a permanent place in one of the
most prominent stateside memorials to America’s participation in the First World
War.
901
“Their Service is Cited.”
346
At Arlington National Cemetery on October 20, 1997, another memorial
opened that honored, in part, the memory of America’s World War One women. The
“Women in Military Service for America Memorial” honors the services of all
American women who have supported and served in the military, from the American
Revolution to the present day (figure 7.6). 902 It is considered a living memorial
because the non-profit foundation that created the memorial, the Women in Military
Service for America Memorial Foundation, manages and curates exhibits that are
displayed inside the memorial. They also operate an archive that supports the study of
American women’s military service. 903 In attendance at the memorial’s dedication, in
her World War One uniform, was Frieda Hardin, a 101 year-old veteran of the Navy
Yeoman (F). 904 In a speech at the ceremony, former Yeoman Third Class Hardin told
the audience that in her 101 years of life, she had “observed many wonderful
achievements—but none as important or as meaningful to the progress of women in
taking their rightful place in society.” She added that “for my part, I have always been
very proud of my Navy service.” 905 Alongside several generations of women who
supported the military, Hardin helped inscribe her service and the service of her
comrades into the landscape of military memory at Arlington National Cemetery
(figure 7.7).
902
Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, “History,” Women in Military
Service for America Memorial Foundation, n.d.
<http://www.womensmemorial.org/About/history.html> (31 December 2014)
903
Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught, “President’s Welcome,” Women in Military Service for America
Memorial Foundation, Inc., n.d. <http://www.womensmemorial.org/About/welcome.html> (7
February 2015).
904
“The Register,” Summer 1998, pg. 6, Box: Women’s Memorial Foundation Newsletters, “The
Register”, WIMSA History Collection, Women’s Memorial Foundation Archive.
905
Wilma L. Vaught, The Day the Nation Said “Thanks!”: A History and Dedication Scrapbook of the
Women in Military Service for America Memorial (Washington D.C.: Military Women’s Press, 1999),
98-99.
347
Figure 7.6: The Women in Military Service for America Memorial (WIMSA) at
Arlington National Cemetery, (foreground) visible underneath Arlington House
(background). Inside the memorial are exhibits about the history of American
women’s military service. February 2015. Photograph by Allison S. Finkelstein.
Figure 7.7: Former Yeoman (F) Third Class Frieda Hardin (center) waves to the
crowd after her speech at the dedication ceremony for the Women in Military Service
for America Memorial on October 18, 1997 at Arlington National Cemetery,
Virginia. Her son, Captain Jerald Kristen, USNR (Ret) stands on her left and
Brigadier General Wilma L. Vaught, USAF (Ret), the President of the Women in
Military Service for American Memorial Foundation, Inc. stands on her right.
348
Women’s veteranist-commemorations did not stop with the generation of
women from the First World War. Veteranist-commemorations have continued over
the years and expanded to embrace more men and a wider range of Americans
beyond the military community. The Honor Flight program represents a well-known
example of the growth of veteranist-commemorations. The Honor Flight Network
consists of regional “hubs” across the U.S. that raise money to take veterans of World
War Two, the Korean War, and Vietnam on a free trip to the Washington D.C.
memorials that honor their military service. As a non-profit organization, Honor
Flight is run almost entirely by grassroots volunteers. Since its inception in 2005, it
has grown into a nationally known organization that brings together aging veterans
and their families, local communities, younger veterans, active-duty military
personnel, and major companies for a philanthropic cause. Community service forms
the core of the program, which resembles a pilgrimage not unlike the Gold Star
pilgrimages, except that it is directly funded by citizens rather than the government.
By combining community service to veterans with a trip to the monuments in
Washington D.C., Honor Flight continues the tradition of veteranistcommemorations. The program brings life to the much criticized and somewhat
sterile design of the National World War II Memorial when it fills the site with
veterans, who often interact and share their stories with the many schoolchildren and
tourists at the memorial (figures 7.8 and 7.9). 906
906
The author learned this information from participating in Honor Flights for four years starting in
2011. For more about the criticisms of the National World War II Memorial’s design see: Shanken,
“Planning Memory: Living Memorials in the United States during World War II,” 144-145. See also:
“Honor Flight,” Honor Flight, n.d. < https://www.honorflight.org/> (7 Feb 2015).
349
Figure 7.8: During an Honor Flight San Diego trip, World War II Army Air Corps
veteran Morton Gollin speaks to visiting schoolchildren about his experiences as a
German POW while sitting at the National World War II Memorial in Washington
Figure 7.9: John and Beverly Rougas, both World War II veterans who served in the
Marine Corps, stand with two current Marines at the Iwo Jima Memorial during
Honor Flight San Diego’s trip to Washington D.C. May 3, 2014. Photograph by
350
Many women today still remain at the forefront of veteranistcommemorations, especially women who have served and sacrificed for the nation.
One such women is Captain Jenna C. Grassbaugh, an army officer, a veteran of the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a Gold Star widow. After the death of her husband,
Captain Jonathan D. Grassbaugh, by a roadside bomb while he served in Iraq on April
7, 2007, Grassbaugh contemplated what to do with the insurance money she received
upon his death. She did not feel right spending it on ordinary purchases. Grassbaugh
wanted to find a way to use the money to serve another needy population other than
the survivors of fallen soldiers like herself, for whom aid groups have increased in
recent years.
As a law student at The Ohio State University several years later, Grassbaugh
decided to use the money to create The Jonathan D. Grassbaugh Veterans Project at
Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law to provide free legal assistance to Ohio
veterans. 907 In an oral interview, she explained that she hoped this project “would
have John’s name and sort of bear his legacy in that regard, but would also serve
another purpose, something that would have been, I think, something that he would
have believed in too.” Grassbaugh did not think she ever assumed that
commemoration could only be done through stone statues or memorials. She even got
a tattoo in honor of her husband that she calls a ‘memorial tattoo,’ transforming her
own body into what might be the purest form of a living memorial. As she reflected
on her experiences, Grassbaugh said that a lot people in her position, or people who
907
“Grassbaugh Veterans Project,” Moritz College of Law: Grassbaugh Veterans Project, n.d. <
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/grassbaugh/> (8 Feb 2015).
351
just want to help others like her, “recognize there are lots of ways to commemorate
and to memorialize these individuals, and if you can do it with something more than
just a monument that people go look at, it’s almost better because…if it’s something
that, where other people are receiving a benefit, you think… that maybe some good
can come of some bad.” In 2014, Captain Grassbaugh’s words echoed the sentiments
of her female predecessors from the First World War and demonstrated a present-day
iteration of the veteranist-commemorations that they championed during the interwar
period. 908
Women’s efforts to equally serve in the military and obtain veteran’s benefits
continue today as the U.S. emerges from two wars in which women played a larger
role than ever both on and off the battlefield, a distinction that became more difficult
to define during these conflicts. In 2013, the military lifted the ban on women in
combat. Military leaders are now struggling to determine how to integrate women
into the combat positions newly available to them. 909 These new frontiers for
women’s military service will require women to advocate for themselves in novel
ways as they seek to enter occupations previously barred to females. With the issue of
military sexual trauma against women also in the national spotlight, female service
members’ struggles to gain compensation and healthcare for these issues from the
908
Captain Jenna C. Grassbaugh. Interview by the author, August 11, 2014, telephone conversation,
College Park, MD; Moritz College of Law, “Grassbaugh Veterans Project,” The Ohio State University:
Moritz College of Law, n.d. < http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/grassbaugh/> (31 December 2014).
909
Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, “Pentagon is Set to Lift Combat Ban for Women,” The New
York Times, Jan. 23 2013 < http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/us/pentagon-says-it-is-lifting-ban-onwomen-in-combat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0> (31 December 2014). Additionally, the U.S. Marine
Corps announced in April 2012 that for the first time women will be allowed to attend infantry school.
James K. Sanborn, “USMC 4-Star: Women to Attend Infantry School,” Marine Corps Times, April 18,
2012 <http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2012/04/marine-corps-women-infantry-combatdunford-amos-041812/> (30 September 2012).
352
Department of Veterans Affairs have recently been exposed. 910 The fight for
women’s equal treatment in the military, and women’s equal recognition as veterans,
continues long after the battles waged by the women of the First World War.
Exposing the history of female World War One veterans, and the history of how
women supported the military from within and outside of the armed forces, can
hopefully help shed light on these issues as they are grappled with today.
After the First World War, an eclectic group of American women who
believed that they had served and sacrificed during that conflict pursued veteranistcommemorations as a way to help male and female veterans, their local communities,
and their nation. They believed that their wartime services and sacrifices endowed
them with a duty to ‘carry on’ their wartime work. They defined community service
and advocacy as a form of commemoration and often preferred these activities to
more traditional commemorative rites such as stone statues and monuments. All
female veteranist-commemorators did not completely reject traditional statuary
memorials, but they often saw veteranist-commemorations as more useful and they
sometimes even combined them with statuary memorials. Although these women did
not secure a decisive victory for veteranist-commemorations over statuary memorials,
they impacted and shifted the commemorative discourse of the interwar period. They
suggested that monuments should not be the de facto way to memorialize wars.
Through their suggestion of an alternative to physical monuments, they crafted a
910
Emily Wax-Thobodeaux, “Female Veterans Battling PTSD From Sexual Trauma Fight for
Redress,” The Washington Post, Dec. 26, 2014 < http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/femaleveterans-battling-ptsd-from-sexual-trauma-fight-for-redress/2014/12/25/f2f22d8e-7b07-11e4-b821503cc7efed9e_story.html> (31 December 2014).
353
cultural legacy that persists until the present, even though it is often overlooked and
sometimes forgotten.
By continuing their wartime service through veteranist-commemorations,
female veteranist-commemorators reminded the nation that they too had contributed
to the war effort and fulfilled the duties of martial citizenship even before they could
all vote or equally enter the military. They defined women’s wartime contributions
broadly and demonstrated how women impacted the military and served their country
from inside and beyond the official branches of the armed forces. Through their
commemorations of women’s wartime service and their struggles to include that
service in the commemorative and historical narrative of America’s participation in
the Great War, they pushed for women to gain the full rights of citizenship beyond
the vote. They hoped that the next generation of wartime women would have more
equal opportunities to contribute to America’s national defense and would be treated
as veterans.
Because women’s veteranist-commemorations were created through the acts
of service they performed, most of the evidence of women’s intensive
memorialization of the First World War was intangible and ephemeral from the start.
The majority of this evidence no longer exists on the landscape. It has been almost
deleted from the history of American commemorative culture in the interwar period.
While the First Division Memorial still stands in Washington D.C. near the Memorial
Building to the Women of the World War, the women who led service projects inside
that structure, and the members of the American War Mothers who sold carnations
there, are no longer around to testify to their commemorative service programs. In the
354
years since its creation, that Memorial Building no longer houses the service activities
it was created to shelter, and it has lost much of its service mission. In France,
monuments to the AEF tower over the trench scarred landscape filled with the
American graves still maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission.
But without the Gold Star rest houses, nothing physically remains at these cemeteries
to teach visitors about the Gold Star Pilgrimages and women’s extraordinary impact
on American military commemoration, both overseas and in the U.S.
By recovering the history of women’s veteranist-commemorations, this
dissertation has restored the legacy of these women’s contributions to the historical
narrative and demonstrated the innovative and selfless ways they pursued
commemoration. As the Centennial of the U.S.’s entrance into the First World War
approaches in 2017, this story can help convince Americans, often oblivious to the
importance of the First World War, that this conflict had a profound impact on the
nation. It also can inform the leaders of today’s memorialization projects about a form
of commemoration that placed people in the center of the spotlight rather than politics
or money. The hybrid forms of interwar veteranist-commemorations that included
both memorial rites and service work could help these leaders find a better balance
between the two and understand that they do not have to be exclusive of each other.
While President Obama’s 2016 budget included a proposed appropriation of $168.8
billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the government’s United States World
War One Centennial Commission is forbidden from receiving federal appropriations,
355
making it difficult for the nation to properly commemorate the Centennial. 911 This
may indicate that balance between supporting veterans and commemorating the
military has deteriorated in recent years.
As leaders grapple with the frustrations stemming from the lack of space for
new memorials on the National Mall, and contested projects such as the Eisenhower
memorial and the proposed National World War One Memorial at Pershing Park,
they could learn a lesson from these women who yearned to help others in their
commemorations. In a nation reeling from over a decade of war, and with a new
generation of struggling male and female veterans and an ever-growing civil-military
divide, such a lesson could provide a commemorative alternative that could help with
healing. If the female commemorators of the interwar period were alive today, they
would surely not be wasting their time arguing about the merits of a memorial’s
design or location. They would be at the new Walter Reed Army Medical Center in
Bethesda, Maryland, helping disabled veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan. Or, they would
be lobbying Congress with female veterans who have suffered from military sexual
trauma. Perhaps they would pursue efforts to promote peace and remind us that all
wars are inherently ineffective, costly, and inefficient ways to solve problems. With
so much work to be done to help those who have suffered while guarding the nation,
these women would be the first to remind us that serving others is one of the best
ways to commemorate those who have defended the freedom of the United States.
911
“Annual Budget Submission,” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: Office of Budget 3 Feb 2015
<http://www.va.gov/budget/products.asp> (8 Feb 2015); “The United States World War One
Centennial Commission: About,” The United States World War One Centennial Commission, 2015 <
http://worldwar-1centennial.org/index.php/about/the-world-war-onecentennial-commission.html> (9
Feb 2015).
356
Excursus A: Shot-by-Shot Scene Analysis of “Remember My
Forgotten Man”
A shot-by-shot scene analysis of “Remember My Forgotten Man” reveals the subtle
and explicit symbolic details that align the scene with veteranist-commemorations.
Consideration of the scene’s plot and characters highlights its connections with the
ideas promoted by female veteranist-commemorators. This analysis uncovers yet
another interpretation of this famous scene that has yet to be considered by scholars.
As the finale of Gold Diggers of 1933, “Remember My Forgotten Man” began
after the resolution of the film’s main plot. ‘The show-within-a-show’ can finally go
on and the curtain opens on a proscenium arch stage that contains a set of a city
street. 912 Joan Blondell walks out of an apartment building, evocatively dressed as a
prostitute in a tight, low-cut shirt and form-fitting skirt. 913 She approaches a man
trying to light a cigarette butt he picked up off the ground, soliciting her trade as an
act of sympathy since she knows the man cannot pay. She has an expression of
compassion on her face as she tries to help him light the cigarette with her own,
taking his wrist and sensually placing the cigarette from her mouth into his mouth.
This gesture symbolized the solicitation that marked her as the sexual aggressor
forced into prostitution by the Great Depression. As the man walks away, she leans
against a street lamp and launches into her monologue, the song “Remember My
Forgotten Man,” which she speak-sings.
912
The Busby Berkeley Collection: Gold Diggers of 1933.
The following sources accept the interpretation of Blondell’s character in this scene as a
streetwalker: Kelly, Cinema and the Great War, 154; Barrios, A Song in the Dark, 377 LaSalle, 190;
Rubin, 75-76; Babington and Evans, 64; Grant, 62.
913
357
She first addresses the questionable character of the man she just shared a
smoke with. As music plays in the background, she tells the audience: “I don’t know
if he deserves a bit of sympathy. Forget your sympathy, that’s all right with me. I was
satisfied to drift along from day to day, ‘till they came and took my man away.” By
admitting the failings of the Forgotten Man, Blondell connected the Forgotten Man’s
plight to hers. She explained how she was somewhat satisfied until “they,” meaning
the government, took him away from her. This is the first implication that the
government abandoned veterans and that that scene intended to send a message to the
government. 914
In the next verse, Blondell tells the audience that when government first took
her man, it was to fight in World War One:
Remember my forgotten man,
You put a rifle in his hand,
You sent him far away,
You shouted: “Hip-hooray!”
But look at him today.
This stanza recalled the war’s empty patriotism when American soldiers were treated
as heroes. It warned against false patriotic gestures and hollow support for the troops.
This line, and Berkeley’s interpretation of it, indicated that as veterans themselves,
Warren, Dubin, and Berkeley may have disliked patriotism and memorials that did
not help veterans. They may have preferred veteranist-commemorations because they
actually impacted veterans’ lives. This verse defined the Forgotten Man as a male war
veteran tossed aside by the government he served. This line also alluded to the recent
1932 Bonus March. It urged the audience to sympathize with the Forgotten Man and
914
LaSalle, 190.
358
the Bonus March, in contrast to many female veteranist-commemorators who did not
necessarily endorse the Bonus March, at least publicly. This verse also excluded
female veterans from the scene’s visual portrayal of forgotten veterans, despite the
existence of these women, their needs, and the efforts of female veteranistcommemorators to publicize their plight.
As the camera zooms in on Blondell’s face during the next verse, she turns to
the suffering of rural Americans during the Great Depression. She equates the
Forgotten Man with downtrodden American farmers, especially those in the west who
dealt with the drought that began from 1930 to 1932. 915
Remember my forgotten man,
You had him cultivate the land.
He walked behind the plow,
The sweat fell from his brow,
But look at him right now.
As a farmer, the Forgotten Man worked the land to feed the U.S. and other parts of
the world, but his efforts increased the severity of the drought and the Depression
because he overworked the soil. His devotion to duty led to his current turmoil. The
song asserted that it was the government who urged him to over-cultivate the land to
increase production during World War One and now abandoned him as the west
stood on the verge of the Dust Bowl, unbeknownst to the farmer. 916
915
A serious drought affected the Great Plains starting in 1931 and led to the Dust Bowl. Donald
Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979),
10-11; Paul S. Boyer. Clifford E. Clark, Jr., Sandra McNair Hawley, Joseph E. Kett, Neal Salisbury,
Harvard Sitkoff, Nancy Woloch, The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Volume
Two: From 1865 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), 515; George B. Tindall, David E. Shi,
Thomas Lee Pearcy, The Essential America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), 461.
916
Although it simplifies some of the contributing factors, some scholars assert that the government
contributed to the causes of the Dust Bowl through poor land management. See: The Enduring Vision,
361. For a more detailed explanation of the causes of the Dust Bow see: R. Douglas Hurt, The Dust
Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981), 17-31.
359
Blondell then laments how the fate of American women was tied to the
Forgotten Man:
And once, he used to love me,
I was happy then.
He used to take care of me,
Won't you bring him back again?
‘Cause ever since the world began,
A woman's got to have a man.
Forgetting him, you see,
Means you're forgetting me,
Like my forgotten man.
Before the Great Depression, women and families were supported by men who were
now unable to act as the traditional breadwinner. With this conservative view of
gender relations, the song suggested that by forgetting these men, the government
also forgot American women and families. By arguing that “a woman’s got to have a
man,” the song promoted a traditional conception of femininity and family life. It
implied that without male support, women were forced to transgress traditional
gender roles to earn money to return to the conservative norm. This demonstrated
how women were forgotten by the government when they abandoned veterans. It also
ruled out the possibility that women veterans could be a family’s breadwinner.
As the scene continues, the orchestra music crescendos and African-American
singer Etta Moten begins to sing the verses Blondell just spoke. These two women
collaborate across racial lines, linked by Moten’s vocal narration. The camera cuts to
a shot of a Forgotten Man walking down the street with his head down in shame, and
then pans up to an image of Moten, alone and separated from the white women. She
begins to sing as she sits in the apartment window, briefly making this AfricanAmerican woman the voice of the Forgotten Man, despite visually segregating her
360
from the white women in the scene. 917 Although African-Americans were absent
from most of the film, for this short moment they were included in its narrative of the
Great Depression and World War One. 918 This segment further infused the film with
a radical political agenda that seemed to partially include African-Americans in the
ranks of the Forgotten Man through Moten’s character. The scene showed white
women and African-American women cooperating despite segregation to support
veterans in ways that many female veteranist-commemorators rarely encouraged and
often tried to prevent.
As Moten continues singing, Berkeley pans the camera to focus on another
white woman who holds a baby in her arms and stares despondently out the
window. 919 This image resembles the portrait photographs taken by Dorothea Lange
during the Great Depression, especially the famous 1936 “Migrant Mother” image
(figure 8.1). 920 Although this photograph was taken after the film’s production, it
presented the same messages as Berkeley’s cinematic images of the physical and
emotional toll the Great Depression took on American women. 921 The camera then
pans down to a forlorn old white woman in a rocking chair, another image that
917
Spivak, 76, 80, 335.
African-Americans appear only one other time in the film, when an African-American couple is
briefly shown during “Pettin’ in the Park.” For more on African-Americans in Hollywood films see:
Donald Bogle, Bright Boulevards, Bold Dream: The Story of Black Hollywood (New York: One World
Books, 2005); Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History
of Blacks in American Films (New York: The Viking Press, 1973); and Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff,
Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 2009).
919
For more on Dorothea Lange see: Linda Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009).
920
Gordon, xii; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Staff, “Dorothea Lange’s
“Migrant Mother” Photographs in the Farm Security Administration Collection: An Overview,” The
Library of Congress: Prints and Photographs Reading Room, 2004
<http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html> (31 October 2014).
921
Ibid.
918
361
resembles Lange’s photographs. Even though it is unlikely that Lange’s photographs
influenced or inspired this tableau—many of them were produced after 1933—the
similarities between the images evoke an analogous interpretation of the human toll
of the Great Depression. These images all urged the viewer to sympathize with
suffering Americans, especially women. 922
Figure 8.1: “Migrant Mother” or “Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven
children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California.” Dorothea Lange. Courtesy of the
Library of Congress. <http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsa.8b29516>
As Moten continues singing, the camera cuts back to Blondell, who is leaning
on the street lamp. She sees another Forgotten Man slumped against the wall, either
drunk or sleeping. A cop wakes him with his stick and grabs him to try to get him to
move. Blondell watches the cop manhandling him and intervenes. She pulls open the
922
However, Lange did produce photographs capturing the personal side of the Great Depression in
1932 and 1933. Gordon, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, 103, 116, 117. .922 My interpretation
of the similarities between Lange and Berkeley disagrees with Morris Dickstein, who describes them
as opposites. Dickstein, 360.
362
inside of the man’s jacket and reveals what appears to be the French Croix de Guerre
pinned to the fabric. Before Blondell angrily moves the Forgotten Man away from the
cop, Berkeley zooms in on the medal so it is visible to the audience, many of whom
probably would have known that it was awarded by the French military for valor in
battle during the First World War. This medal indicated that this Forgotten Man was a
war hero, while the policeman symbolized the unjust treatment of these heroes by the
government, especially during the Bonus March. This interlude boldly criticized the
government’s treatment of veterans. As he did in several of his other films, Berkeley
used his art to promote the social and political causes he cared about.
After this brief interlude with the police, the scene continues during a
flashback as the curtains of the stage part to reveal a group of Doughboys marching in
formation against cheering, flag-waving crowds. The Doughboys march on
mechanized moving walkways which seem to move them in a way that is
unstoppable, perhaps to symbolize the unceasing futility of trench warfare. From
overhead, Berkeley shows the soldiers being separated from the cheering crowds,
creating a nostalgic portrayal of American’s empty support for the war and the troops.
The curtains open on the next segment and we see the Doughboys in France,
seamlessly continuing their march in the rain as they energetically head to their first
taste of battle. Another line of soldiers enters from the opposite direction on a
mechanized walkway. They have come from the front lines and they provide a visual
contrast to the newly arrived Doughboys. As rain pours and the music becomes more
staccato, these seasoned troops limp along, their faces bandaged and their heads
down, no longer marching in unison. Wounded soldiers are carried on stretchers and
363
the camera zooms in on their ashen and sorrowful faces, the blood that drips from
their wounds, their bandaged eyes, and their torn uniforms. The men in this scene
have become the objects of the subjective gaze, an inversion of the male gaze that
Berkeley famously used to showcase his beautiful chorus girls. In subverting the male
gaze, Berkeley made men the victims in this story and depicted women as the heroes
who supported them. This cinematic inversion signaled that women were the focus of
the scene while men were relegated to the roles of chorus girls. Most interwar films
about World War One centered on masculine stories without many female characters.
They featured male soldiers as the anti-war voice of reason, such as All Quiet on the
Western Front (1930) and The Big Parade (1925). In contrast, in this scene, Berkeley
gave this role to women. He built on the messages of these anti-war films, but broke
with them by adding women as key players. His interpretation is more similar to
German filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch’s Broken Lullaby (1932), in which the fiancé of a
dead German soldier is the story’s hero. She sacrificed her own happiness to heal the
pain caused to her fiancé’s parents when the French soldier who killed him arrives.
This similarity indicates there may have been international elements to Berkeley’s use
of women as the mouthpieces for an anti-war message.
The vignette of marching, battle-scarred soldiers also resembled John Singer
Sargent’s 1919 painting “Gassed” (figure 8.2). 923 In Sargent’s painting, blindfolded
soldiers with gas wounds to their eyes stand in line, each holding the shoulder of the
man in front of him as they try to walk amidst wounded soldiers sprawled out on the
923
The Imperial War Museum, “”Gassed,” The Imperial War Museum Collections, n.d.
<http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/23722> (31 October 2014).
364
ground. 924 Whether or not Berkeley found inspiration in Sargent’s painting or his own
experiences with the AEF in France, his cinematic representation of these wounded
soldiers evokes sympathy from the audience. This segment of the scene reminded
audiences of the sacrifices of the Forgotten Man and the harsh realities of war,
buoying its antiwar message.
Figure 8.2: Gassed by John Singer Sargent, 1919. Imperial War Museum. ©IWM
(Art.IWM ART1460) <http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/23722>
After another blackout and opening of the curtains, the scene shifts forward
again in time to the Great Depression. The lines of the marching men continue, but
now the men are receiving food in a breadline. This transition infers that these
destitute men are the soldiers just shown. With bleak facial expressions, most of the
men keep their eyes to the ground in shame at their situation. Once again, Berkeley
924
Ibid.
365
moves the camera to focus on their individual faces, re-appropriating his male gaze
shot to show these men’s despair. A cigarette is passed around, and as the men stay
silent, the women remain the voice of these veterans when they begin to sing in
chorus, starting with “Oh, bring them back.” 925
A new stage set composed of three levels of arches is revealed; each arch
contains marching men in Doughboy uniforms as the group of Forgotten Men from
the breadline marches underneath the arches toward the viewer. The arched set is in
the same shape as the three-arch rainbow patch of the AEF’s 42nd Division. This
division became nicknamed the “Rainbow Division” during World War One because
it was a composite division formed from twenty-six National Guard units from across
the country. 926 The arches represented the Forgotten Man in the past as he served his
country, and the impoverished men marching through the arches represented the
Forgotten Man during the present-day Great Depression.
As these Depression-era Forgotten Men march toward a large staircase, more
of their comrades join them from the wings. Now, the men finally begin to sing along
with the women. The female chorus stands on the sides of the stairs with their arms
lifted outward and upward toward the men. The men’s lyrics from the first few verses
and proclaim:
We are the real forgotten men.
Who have to lead this life again.
925
Spivak, 77.
Special thanks to Dr. David M. Finkelstein for pointing out the reference to the Rainbow Division
in this set during one of our many afternoons watching old movies on TCM when I was in high school.
For information on the 42nd Infantry Division and its insignia during WWI see: Robert J. Dalessandro
and Michael G. Knapp, Organization and Insignia of the American Expeditionary Force, 1917-1923
(Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 2008), 200-203. I have not yet found any descriptions of the set
as a symbol of the Rainbow Divisions elsewhere. The set is described by Tony Thomas and Jim Terry
as “a huge half-wheel contraption” and by Barry Keith Grant as an “impressive German Expressionist
set with three arches.” Thomas and Terry, 61; Grant, 63.
926
366
We sauntered forth to fight,
For glory was our pride,
But somehow glory died.
Remember your forgotten men.
You’ve got to let us live again.
We came, we marched away,
To fight for USA,
But where are we today? 927
These lyrics erased any doubts that the song depicted the perceived injustices endured
by the Bonus Marchers and the Forgotten Man. The women surround the men and
sing in between and under the men’s verses, with Blondell leading refrains of: “Oh,
bring them back,” and “Now they’re just a memory, Oh, bring them back, we want
them back.” 928 She takes the central focus again as she repeats the refrain of the “And
once he used to love me” verse. The Forgotten Men kneel down in a circle around her
as she clasps her hands and pleads on their behalf. As she reaches her arms to the sky,
the camera cuts to the dozens of women who also encircle her; they lift up their arms
as they cry for help for their Forgotten Men. An aerial shot captures Blondell and the
ensemble that surrounds her before cutting back to her face as Berkeley moves the
camera backwards on its tracks to reveal the entire scene (see figure 6.1).
A blackout ends the play and the film with this powerful message that
advocated for male veterans and their female relatives. The blackout signaled the end
of President’s Herbert Hoover’s administration and the hopeful beginning of FDR’s
administration. This closing vignette revealed the layers of contemporary American
history being enacted onstage: World War One, the Forgotten Men, the Bonus March,
and the Great Depression. This in-depth excursus of the scene reveals its implicit
927
928
Spivak, 77-78.
Spivak, 80. Blondell’s singing was most likely dubbed.
367
endorsement of veteranist-commemorations and its connection to the ideals
championed by female veteranist-commemorators during the interwar period.
368
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